My first kick at the PP can

I spent a little time this morning playing around with iPhoto to practice some basic PP. I know it's not the greatest picture in the world, but I'm happy for the most part with how the PP on this one came out. I think I've added a lot without taking away much if anything.

Before:

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

I barely see a difference between the two images. The original is underexposed by about 1 EV. Here is an edit in which I increased the exposure and reduced the noise. The blurred heads at the bottom were distracting so I cropped it just above that.

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First time that I have played with somebody elses image. Sorry if you think it is awful.

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No, I can see that mine is not bright and contrasting enough. Think both the others are good.

Thanks folks, keep 'em coming if you have anything at all to say!

Bill, I see what you did there and I like the results. I'll have to try that on a few more. It's odd though, as I view the pics now on my work PC they look drastically different than they do on my Macbook at home (that I did the processing on). Why is that?

My Mac shows the photos much more clear than a PC does.

You need to 1) calibrate your monitors and 2) use a browser that respects embedded color profiles (like Safari).

13inches wrote in post #5516401
.... Bill, I see what you did there and I like the results. I'll have to try that on a few more. It's odd though, as I view the pics now on my work PC they look drastically different than they do on my Macbook at home (that I did the processing on). Why is that?

There are several possibilities. Work PC's are not likely to be set up for color management nor are they likely to be calibrated since color doesn't matter much to spreadsheets and reports. It is also very likely that the color temperature of your work PC display is not set at the right value for image editing which is typically around 6500 K. Usually a color temperature around 9500 K is the default for general purpose use, but it will lead to you adjusting the white balance so that they will look yellow on calibrated displays that are set up for color image editing.One other possible problem could be that your images are in a large color space such as Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB. That is fine if your working space is correct or you do a conversion to the proper working space, but before saving the file for web use, it needs to be converted to sRGB. Most browsers do not support color management, but if you convert the file to sRGB before saving it for the web, colors should look reasonably normal unless the monitor's adjustments are way out of whack.

Here's my take

Saturation +10
Brightness +18
Shadows +2
Highlights +1
USM 10/50/0
Smart Sharpen 100/0.1/Lens Blur
Sepia Filter 25%