Jeff Tweedy of Wilco - State Theatre, Portland, ME 3-26-11

A couple of my favorites:

1.

i'm lovin the light on all these, but it's a shame all but 3 (which is a cracker!) you've cropped the guitar in parts

BJWOK wrote in post #12173724
i'm lovin the light on all these, but it's a shame all but 3 (which is a cracker!) you've cropped the guitar in parts

Thanks Benon (your work is incredible BTW). The crops were mostly intentional (though a bit unfortunate). I shot these for Prefix and I've been really disheartened with the effect of web compression on my Prefix galleries. For this show, I decided to shoot a lot tighter than usual on the theory that doing little or no cropping after the fact would preserve as much quality as possible when they were compressed. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make much of a difference LINK and I lost some guitar bits for my troubles (though I'm still very pleased with the hi-res shots).

If anyone wants to weigh in with advice on preparing images for the web, I'd really appreciate it. Right now I do all my color/exposure/etc. corrections at full size (in Lightroom 3 and PS CS5, resize/resample to 630px wide using bicubic (I stopped using "bicubic sharper" because I would be sharpening in the next step anyway and have more control over it) and then sharpening as the last step before using "save for web and devices" (with "optimized" and "progressive" unchecked).

Here are a couple more full guitar shots:

5.

Really nice shots! The first one is my favorite

Great shots man, and I'm with you on the resizing/sharpening for web... It's pretty unbelievable how much the compression changes those shots on the prefix site. I have been trying to post and re-post images to my site because of the same issues you were running into with preparing images for the web. I am pretty much doing exactly what you are for my prep to post on the web, and as far as I've found in my research, that's about what everyone does?? If anyone else has more input, I too would love to hear!

thanks for the nice words mate

i'm not sure what's happening with the compression thing on prefix, but they do look noticeably worse over there wish i could help, but you seem to have your exporting process sussed correctly, so i'm thinking it's a further compression at the sites end?

KnOzz wrote in post #12178412
Really nice shots! The first one is my favorite

Thank you (mine too!)

DJCronin28 wrote in post #12184163
Great shots man, and I'm with you on the resizing/sharpening for web... It's pretty unbelievable how much the compression changes those shots on the prefix site. I have been trying to post and re-post images to my site because of the same issues you were running into with preparing images for the web. I am pretty much doing exactly what you are for my prep to post on the web, and as far as I've found in my research, that's about what everyone does?? If anyone else has more input, I too would love to hear!

Thanks - my research turned up this method as well. I hoped maybe I missed a step somewhere.

BJWOK wrote in post #12186062
thanks for the nice words mate

i'm not sure what's happening with the compression thing on prefix, but they do look noticeably worse over there wish i could help, but you seem to have your exporting process sussed correctly, so i'm thinking it's a further compression at the sites end?

Thanks for the confirmation on my method. I think you're right about the additional compression by Prefix - to verify, I made a test gallery on my site and uploaded the same 630px versions I sent to prefix. They were way better on my site.

they must have some algorithm at their end

i wouldn't worry - as long as they look good on your site

Yea Benon's probably right!
And after talking with other friends who aren't photographers, most people don't even notice the difference in picture quality unless it's obviously REALLY bad

Thanks guys.
I processed the Prefix shots first because I was on a deadline. I did take some wider shots for myself that I'm just geting to now. Here's one more:

7.

i hadn't really noticed any compression in the Prefix photos but i just did a quick test on one I've uploaded and compared to the original i'd processed...the file size was more than 50% smaller, and it looks like it was saved at jpg quality 6, which would explain it.

narlus wrote in post #12191349
i hadn't really noticed any compression in the Prefix photos but i just did a quick test on one I've uploaded and compared to the original i'd processed...the file size was more than 50% smaller, and it looks like it was saved at jpg quality 6, which would explain it.

Thanks, Tim. I was going to PM you to see if you had some secret recipe for processing your prefix shots bc they always look great. I guess they're just that much better than mine to start with

heh, blushing at this sort of praise first thing in the morning.

i'll send an email to see if that compression can be changed...as long as people are saving files @ 72 dpi for resolution, the file size difference won't be significant.


of the photos, i like #2 the best. looks like the light was a bit of a challenge; hard enough to make the blacks clipped if you don't over-expose. 3 and 5 are also classic Tweedy moments.

absolutely love the first one.

what did you shoot with? and did you use a flash or was the light that good?

swetsastonic wrote in post #12197240
absolutely love the first one.

what did you shoot with? and did you use a flash or was the light that good?

Thanks!
No flash allowed and the lighting was pretty rough - just two small spots above the front of the stage at 50% power (I asked the lighting guy before the show). I shot with a variety of lenses - shot #1 was a 17-55mm 2.8 with the ISO cranked.