Violated every rule of...

[joedlh]

...composition.

Except the horizon splitting the middle one.

Raw, 40D, ISO 160, EF100mm F/2.8 Macro USM, 1/30, F/11, tripod and cable release (did you have to ask?) jpeg quality reduced to fit the forum rules.

I had to travel far for this one.

My front yard.

What say you?

[Robert_Lay]

Nice work, Joe!
Displaying as a pattern doesn't have to follow composition rules. I like this as a pattern.
Thanks for getting as much depth of field as you could.

Congratulations!

[Bill Boehme]

Joe, I like the composition, but there are several technical problems. First, Photoshop shows a gamut warning for about 50% of the image. Second, during the RAW conversion, no optimization was done in ACR -- the defaults are simply nominal starting point, but it is not normally very good to accept them as final values. Third, the web image profile was saved as AdobeRGB. Since, I have a color managed browser, it was not a problem for me, but for the great majority of people viewing the image, it will look very drab. Saving the image with a profile of AdobeRGB may be a good choice for printing if you have a wide gamut printer, however, for web images, it is necessary to first convert the profile to sRGB with a relative colorimetric rendering intent in order for the image to display the correct colors on others monitors when they are not using color managed browsers.

EDIT: As a final note, I would recommend that you use ProPhotoRGB as the working space in Adobe Camera RAW rather than AdobeRGB. Your camera has a much wider color gamut than AdobeRGB and there is no point in discarding any image data before making contrast and tone curve adjustments.

[HappySnapper90]

A little under exposed, but a photo like this isn't really "breaking all the rules" This is a common type of flower photo.

[ozziepuppy]

Joe, I like the composition, but there are several technical problems. First, Photoshop shows a gamut warning for about 50% of the image. Second, during the RAW conversion, no optimization was done in ACR -- the defaults are simply nominal starting point, but it is not normally very good to accept them as final values. Third, the web image profile was saved as AdobeRGB. Since, I have a color managed browser, it was not a problem for me, but for the great majority of people viewing the image, it will look very drab. Saving the image with a profile of AdobeRGB may be a good choice for printing if you have a wide gamut printer, however, for web images, it is necessary to first convert the profile to sRGB with a relative colorimetric rendering intent in order for the image to display the correct colors on others monitors when they are not using color managed browsers.

EDIT: As a final note, I would recommend that you use ProPhotoRGB as the working space in Adobe Camera RAW rather than AdobeRGB. Your camera has a much wide color gamut than AdobeRGB and there is no point in discarding any image data before making contrast and tone curve adjustments.

Not to hijack this thread, but it sounds like you know a lot about checking things in Photoshop. I am in the process of studying several books about Photoshop, but I have a quick question. I just had an image rejected by Alamy that honestly looked "perfect" to me (I know, everyone says that). Apparently it did not have black at 0 and white at 255?? How do I check that? I look at the histogram but I don't see a way to check actual values. I know this is "stooooooopid" but that happens to be where I am with Photoshop. I am an old Elements person and don't know the sophisticated parts of PS, although I am trying to learn. Also, how did you check the photo in this thread to see that PS "shows a gamut warning for 50% of the image"? I think that is the kind of thing they check and if I keep editing based on how things "look" I will never meet their standards. Anyway, thanks.

[Christopher Steven b]

A couple of minutes monkeying with the channels out of curiousity and a sense of experimentation.

[LeuceDeuce]

Not to hijack this thread, but it sounds like you know a lot about checking things in Photoshop. I am in the process of studying several books about Photoshop, but I have a quick question. I just had an image rejected by Alamy that honestly looked "perfect" to me (I know, everyone says that). Apparently it did not have black at 0 and white at 255?? How do I check that? I look at the histogram but I don't see a way to check actual values. I know this is "stooooooopid" but that happens to be where I am with Photoshop. I am an old Elements person and don't know the sophisticated parts of PS, although I am trying to learn. Also, how did you check the photo in this thread to see that PS "shows a gamut warning for 50% of the image"? I think that is the kind of thing they check and if I keep editing based on how things "look" I will never meet their standards. Anyway, thanks.

Clicking inside the large histogram while it's set on color channels will show the number of pixels at each value. Same technique only on the luminance channel will tell you how many pixels you have with a luminance value (black and white) at each chosen point.

Gamut warning can be turned on under View -> Gamut Warning. Remember that this is completely dependant on what printer and substrate you're using, and will fluxuate as you change those settings.

[LeuceDeuce]

One that has a much better chance of surviving the printing process. Even Costco can print this ;)
_

[Bill Boehme]

A little under exposed, but a photo like this isn't really "breaking all the rules" This is a common type of flower photo.

Definitely not underexposed, but if your browser doesn't have color management enabled, it might possibly appear to be underexposed. The image is just about perfectly exposed and any increase in exposure would have resulted in clipping in the red channel.

Not to hijack this thread, but it sounds like you know a lot about checking things in Photoshop. I am in the process of studying several books about Photoshop, but I have a quick question. I just had an image rejected by Alamy that honestly looked "perfect" to me (I know, everyone says that). Apparently it did not have black at 0 and white at 255?? How do I check that? I look at the histogram but I don't see a way to check actual values. I know this is "stooooooopid" but that happens to be where I am with Photoshop. I am an old Elements person and don't know the sophisticated parts of PS, although I am trying to learn. Also, how did you check the photo in this thread to see that PS "shows a gamut warning for 50% of the image"? I think that is the kind of thing they check and if I keep editing based on how things "look" I will never meet their standards. Anyway, thanks.

In the Tone Curve tab in ACR select the Point curve option and with the hand tool selected, hold down the Control key while moving the cursor over the image. The cursor will change into an eyedropper and you will see a marker on the histogram curve showing where that value lies. If you click the mouse at any point on the image, it will leave a marker on the histogram curve where that point lies.

I would say that the Alamy stock photo folks are a bunch of pixel peepers who are fixated on some arbitrary numbers rather than the merits of image composition and quality.

In Photoshop CS3, the gamut warning is in the drop down menu under View. I was able to reduce the out-of-gamut warning to a very small portion of the image by reducing the saturation and vibrance in ACR and then in Photoshop, create a desaturated layer to paint over some of the more difficult areas. If anything, they probably rejected the image because of the large amount of out-of-gamut colors which would lead to image quality problems in a printed publication. The fact that the image was supplied in AdobeRGB format might possibly have been another factor, but I assume that would know how to handle color management issues. It is difficult to do your image justice by editing a scaled down JPG version, but I did it anyway just to see if I could bring out some of the detail and get the colors in gamut. I also converted the image profile to sRGB which would make it compatible with most web browsers.

367589

[joedlh]

I'm pleased to have provided the basis for an interesting discussion. The points about gamut are well-taken if one were to have the goal of printing the image. As to the other edits, I see a great deal of personal preference at work. One I thought looked washed out (on my monitor). Another was striking, but brought out too much detail for my taste; I often prefer a softer presentation. Also, the pistils were green in that one, which was not true to the original subject.

Enlightening it was.

[Bill Boehme]

One that has a much better chance of surviving the printing process. Even Costco can print this ;)
_

My hat's off to you, Chris. I think that your edit is the best of all.

I'm pleased to have provided the basis for an interesting discussion. The points about gamut are well-taken if one were to have the goal of printing the image. As to the other edits, I see a great deal of personal preference at work. One I thought looked washed out (on my monitor). Another was striking, but brought out too much detail for my taste; I often prefer a softer presentation. Also, the pistils were green in that one, which was not true to the original subject.

Enlightening it was.

I was assuming that since it was being submitted to a stock photo company, US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 for the CMYK gamut would be appropriate. A good quality inkjet photo printer would have a much larger gamut. Thanks, Chris for explaining that since I didn't give any rationale.

After posting my edit, it occurred to me that I did not make a guess at white balance, so the green leaves do not look quite "right". I like the original version that you did, Joe, but my wide gamut monitor makes the reds really hot (but, that's my problem). ;)

[LeuceDeuce]

Thanks Bill.

The gamut wasn't too bad in Adobe RGB, but on conversion to sRGB it goes in a bad way. So before conversion I switched to 16-bit, and hit it with levels. I reduced the output from 255 to 240, and tried the conversion. It was still pretty bad so I hit it again with another shot from 255 to 240, and that conversion kept the color within gamut. I soft proofed with my local Costco ICC on both glossy and matte paper, and the print would come out with full detail.

For me, the white balance was just too red. I couldn't wrap my head around the reddish leaves.

Printing gamut was a painful lesson for me on many occasions. Something would look really good on screen, but the print would have large splotches of solid colour. If you're only showing on electronic media it's not such a big deal, but critical for print.

It's an interesting subject, and this is a good image to discuss it. Thanks joedlh! :)

[Bill Boehme]

Thanks Bill.

The gamut wasn't too bad in Adobe RGB, but on conversion to sRGB it goes in a bad way. So before conversion I switched to 16-bit, and hit it with levels. I reduced the output from 255 to 240, and tried the conversion. It was still pretty bad so I hit it again with another shot from 255 to 240, and that conversion kept the color within gamut. I soft proofed with my local Costco ICC on both glossy and matte paper, and the print would come out with full detail.

For me, the white balance was just too red. I couldn't wrap my head around the reddish leaves.

Printing gamut was a painful lesson for me on many occasions. Something would look really good on screen, but the print would have large splotches of solid colour. If you're only showing on electronic media it's not such a big deal, but critical for print.

It's an interesting subject, and this is a good image to discuss it. Thanks joedlh! :)

Chris, thanks for your explanation of how you dealt with the out-of-gamut colors. I will open JPG images in ACR if I think that WB, contrast, or other such global changes are needed. Then, when I open it in PS, it will be a 16-bit image until I am ready to save it as an 8-bit image.

This was a really good image to do a soft proof evaluation of the paper profiles that I have for my Canon i9900 printer. My notes below which refer to the "gamut of the paper" is really a shorthand way of stating the "gamut that can be printed on the paper when using Canon ink". Here are the results:

I found that the Canon papers have a fairly large gamut with very few gamut warnings, but the Canon papers all seem to produce small unpredictable color shifts (especially greens). Proofing the colors in PS confirms the color shifts, but they are not always the same as actual printing.
The Ilford Galerie papers have been my favorite since discovering them about a year ago. The smooth gloss paper gives an almost perfect match to screen colors and the other Ilford papers are also excellent. The other really nice thing about the Ilford Galerie papers is their large gamut in which no gamut warning occurred with this image.
Another high dollar paper that I bought was Harman Gloss FB Al. It turned out to be a very poor performer. The printed images have quite noticeable color shifts and when proofing this particular image in PS, about half of the image displayed a gamut warning -- almost as bad as US Web Coated (SWOP) v2.I have heard a lot about Red River paper and may try it someday, but I have a pretty large supply of paper that may last for a few yeas before running out.

Thanks, Joe for starting this discussion.