Hyde Park, Sydney

[graciousness]

I've decided to swallow my lack of photographic confidence and put up some photos on flickr.

I took this photo last year and I've been looking at it and I can't decide if it's too green or saturated or not? Being that it's at the park on a very sunny day, I guess it's to be expected that the photo would have a predominant green tone to the image, but is it too much?



Would really like your advice. I have the raw file on this and can re-edit (thank god!). Cheers and many thanks!

Exposure 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 200
Flash Off, Did not fire
Exposure Mode Auto
White Balance Manual
Scene Capture Type Standard

[SwissJon]

It is a bit oversaturated, and you seem to have oversharpened.. Maybe that's a result of the oversaturation, but it doesn't look quite real.. You need to be careful with the sliders in your PP.

There's a very fine line between getting a decent photo, and pushing it too far.. The best place to see this is where you have two colours that you'd expect to gently blend, perhaps between a subtle orange and yellow in a sunset, and you notice a distinct border. On your picture, there's a noticeable halo around the lampost, flagpoles, building edge. This makes them look very distinct, but since there's no halo in real life, it makes them also look fake. Go easy on the sharpening.. You don't need much. If you're using lightroom, I'd suggest on average (and there'll be exceptions to this) you should try to keep your values below 30 for the amount, below 1 for the radius, below 40 for the detail, and bump the masking up to the point where it selects ONLY the parts that need sharpening, so it's not trying to sharpen the clouds in the sky for example. I would suggest you keep that up in the 80's. If you press and hold the left ALT key while adjusting the sliders, you'll notice that the picture changes to make it a lot clearer what you're actually doing.

Lookin’ Sharp | Lightroom Secrets

[graciousness]

Hi Jon, many thanks for the advice!

I did this on iPhoto which is really very limiting. I'm going to re do this on Aperture which will help.

I'm having problems editing. Not just from lack of knowledge and experience, but from my eyes. Being short sighted in one eye, long sighted in another, and both with astigmatism, I can't focus properly when I take shots and especially when I edit. Hence, oversharpening at times. I do have to keep revisiting photos in different times of the day to check on sharpening because if I edit at night, I look at them in the day time and find that I've overdone things. But then someone has to tell me if something is still oversharpened because of course, I can't trust my eyes.

Masking....I need to read up on that. I don't know how to do that yet.

I can't see the halos....oh my goodness. How am I going to edit properly if I can't see details???

I'll go back and rework on this photo in aperture. Or trash it. Ayayay.

[graciousness]

On top of not seeing properly when I edit, it makes me sick after a while. So with nauseousness, I tend to hurry up editing just to get it over with.

Oh excuses, excuses. I know. But I'm trying to get better.

[Krusty79]

I thought this may be a bit oversharpened, but I don't see any halos either. I was trying to decide if it was too green, but the clouds look white and the brown buildings look brown, so I don't see any excessive "greenness." Maybe is just looks like that because you have green grass along the bottom, green trees on either side and some tall green buildings. Perhaps one of the more senior members can chime in...

I don't see any reason why you would be hesitant to upload this to Flickr - it looks good to me.

[SwissJon]

Masking is about one of the easiest parts of sharpening, you just raise the mask so that you sharpen nothing, then reduce it until only the things that you want are highlighted and nothing else.. I don't know about Aperture or iPhoto, but in Lightroom when you hold the ALT or Option key and adjust the slider, the black areas are where the sharpening is not being applied, the white areas are where they are. You want to make sure you mask the edges of things, but not things like clouds. The less you sharpen needlessly, the better.

I'm not entirely certain it's sharpening or oversaturation, or whether your lens suffers from chromatic abrerration.. Look at the edges of the verticals, the flagpoles and lamp post in the large picture on your flickr site, you'll see a fringe. Maybe I'm just a pixel peeper, but I'm a systems analyst, and live by the saying "take care of the little things and the big things will look after themselves.. That's not so true with photography, you've still got to get the general composition right, but looking after the little things certainly makes a difference to the overall picture.

If you suffer from headaches because of your eyesight, there's a couple of things you can do to help yourself: Turn the brightness down on your screen. Don't sit and work in flourescent light. Change the screen refresh rate. Get a MUCH larger screen. (27" or more) and work a little further away from it.. Hope that helps. I would definitely suggest you do your cropping in the evening, and colour adjustments in the day time.. If you know you oversaturate at night when your eyes are tired, avoid doing it at that time..

[graciousness]

Originally Posted by Krusty79

I thought this may be a bit oversharpened, but I don't see any halos either. I was trying to decide if it was too green, but the clouds look white and the brown buildings look brown, so I don't see any excessive "greenness." Maybe is just looks like that because you have green grass along the bottom, green trees on either side and some tall green buildings. Perhaps one of the more senior members can chime in...

I don't see any reason why you would be hesitant to upload this to Flickr - it looks good to me.

Many thanks for your advice! At least it makes me feel better that my eyes are not that bad - hehe - I was beginning to think I'm blinder than I thought

The picture still really does bother me and I've been postponing re-editing until I've looked into more in-depth study on what Swiss Jon had advised regarding masking, etc. Visible halos or not, you've also confirmed that it seems oversharpened and I need to correct this.

SwissJon Masking is about one of the easiest parts of sharpening, you just raise the mask so that you sharpen nothing, then reduce it until only the things that you want are highlighted and nothing else.. I don't know about Aperture or iPhoto, but in Lightroom when you hold the ALT or Option key and adjust the slider, the black areas are where the sharpening is not being applied, the white areas are where they are. You want to make sure you mask the edges of things, but not things like clouds. The less you sharpen needlessly, the better.

I'm not entirely certain it's sharpening or oversaturation, or whether your lens suffers from chromatic abrerration.. Look at the edges of the verticals, the flagpoles and lamp post in the large picture on your flickr site, you'll see a fringe. Maybe I'm just a pixel peeper, but I'm a systems analyst, and live by the saying "take care of the little things and the big things will look after themselves.. That's not so true with photography, you've still got to get the general composition right, but looking after the little things certainly makes a difference to the overall picture.

If you suffer from headaches because of your eyesight, there's a couple of things you can do to help yourself: Turn the brightness down on your screen. Don't sit and work in flourescent light. Change the screen refresh rate. Get a MUCH larger screen. (27" or more) and work a little further away from it.. Hope that helps. I would definitely suggest you do your cropping in the evening, and colour adjustments in the day time.. If you know you oversaturate at night when your eyes are tired, avoid doing it at that time..

Just to let you know that I've been a good girl and really taking your advice in, I've read up more into masking.



My next step is to find out how to do masking on aperture and on photoshop (CS3). I haven't done any reading on editing at all until now, and yes, it's time I improve my post-production techniques, especially I'm still a beginner and my photos will heavily rely on post-production to make them look ok.

I have adjusted my screen's brightness to the lowest setting and it still makes me ill (did this as soon as I got my imac). It really doesnt' take long for my eyes to get tired and start acting up on me and I hate it. I can't even look at anything being fast-forwarded or scrolled without feeling nausea. I can't complain, though, as these are the eyes I was born with. I'll have to learn how to have more patience and be a better photographer so I dont' need to do heavy post=production work

I'll post updated version of the photo as soon as I get it done. Am afraid it will be awhile but I'll get it done!

Cheers Jon, for all your help!