Cracked *critique my pp*

[lonelyjew]

Instead of studying for exams I decided to mess with a picture in photoshop to make it a bit grittier. Did I overdue it with the contrast and pp?

Original
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w148/superlonelyjew/Exploration/flakeclose.jpg

The result
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w148/superlonelyjew/pics/photography/flakeclose2.jpg

Thanks you

[SWPhotoImaging]

I think the pp is an improvement and I like the final result.

[Advisor]

I like it a lot - looks good

[dpark]

Did I overdue it with the contrast and pp?
I'd say yes. I think going gritty is fine, but it looks like you pushed it too far. It looks noisy to my eyes, and a lot of little spots seem to be blown out (especially the red channel?).

[Merran]

Not too sure what you mean by 'grittier', but pretty green does not convey 'gritty' to me. I think that this would make an attractive B&W abstract.

[JuiceBox]

I think it's a bit too oversharpened. I like the tonality of it, but tone down the sharpening a bit. I agree about the BW. Try it out.

[lonelyjew]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I don't really know what I meant by gritty, rougher I guess is what I meant. Here are two attempts in b/w,

The first is from the post processed image above with a bit of noise reduction to both get rid of noise that was put in from the post processing and to tone down sharpness a tad.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w148/superlonelyjew/pics/photography/flakeclosebw2.jpg

The second was going from scratch, similar method in post processing overall but to a smaller extent. I also cropped off a bit of the bottom.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w148/superlonelyjew/pics/photography/flakeclosebw.jpg

[Merran]

The first of the B&W makes an interesting abstract for me.

[vpnd]

pp is cool in #2

[MikePrattPhotography]

IM gonna have to agree with the above.. iTs just a bit overdone. However and improvement from the original.

[lonelyjew]

Thanks everyone!

[Bill Boehme]

Maybe you ought to consider studying for the exam. ;) Just kidding -- I know that given the choice between work and play which one I would choose.

I don't know what the image is a picture of, but whatever it is, I think that it has been over processed. Now, if the green cracked thing were placed into some context that gave me some insight into a bigger picture then the aggressive post processing might make more sense.