The Light at the End of the Day

jeffmeyers

Eia

Wow! I was expecting something in IR but the colors blew me away! It is really lovely...

lindaj448

I always like nature photos...but the colors here are just way too saturated. The first impression when looking at it is: "oh this person likes to use Photoshop, but hasn't quite figured it out yet!"

Hope that isn't too harsh, just offering my 2 cents of constructive criticism. Keep up the good work.

*click*

jeffmeyers

lindaj448 wrote:

I always like nature photos...but the colors here are just way too saturated. The first impression when looking at it is: "oh this person likes to use Photoshop, but hasn't quite figured it out yet!"

Hope that isn't too harsh, just offering my 2 cents of constructive criticism. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for being bold and offering a critique. I love it! And I can understand that critique. Let me see if I can help you see my perspective.

Even before I begin, let me say that I don't think this is a GREAT image by any stretch. But I like it. Like it, but don't love it.

First, are you viewing this on a calibrated display? If not, then it may indeed look over-saturated or even mis-colored to you. It looks just right (to me) on my calibrated display.

I've been to this flower garden 3 times before, but the light was not right. Yesterday evening, the sun was close to setting and the light hit the flower at just the right angle. The quality of the light really did bring out the color in the flower. That's what I wanted to capture.

So let me walk you through the all the adjustments I made to this image. Here's a jpeg copy of the uncropped original RAW image from my D300 (picture control set to Vivid; saturation at normal):



- first thing I did was give it a square crop
- next I added some gaussian blur to the background
- I also needed to darken and DE-saturate the green background and the background flower (this took about five steps in Capture NX2)
- then I increased the mid-tone contrast to bring out the texture of the pedals on the central flower
- then I worked on the overal contrast a bit with the curves adjustment
- finally I fixed the blemishes on the pedals with the auto retouch adjustment

I did not increase the saturation or use "color boost." My adjustments darkened the flower a bit and that would have increased the saturation somewhat. But for at least two adjustments I actually turned the "chrominance" opacity to 0 in order not to over-sat the image.

So that's what I did. But having said that, you may be right. It might look over-saturated on your monitor. Or objectively speaking, it might even need a little de-saturation. I usually look at my own adjusted images a few weeks later and tweak them in many ways, often de-saturating them a bit. Sometimes photographers can't look at their work objectively except after some time has passed and they are not so close to the capture. So a couple weeks from now I may come back to this thread and say, "You were right!"

GoofBckt

jeffmeyers wrote:

Thanks for being bold and offering a critique. I love it! And I can understand that critique. Let me see if I can help you see my perspective.

Even before I begin, let me say that I don't think this is a GREAT image by any stretch. But I like it. Like it, but don't love it.

First, are you viewing this on a calibrated display? If not, then it may indeed look over-saturated or even mis-colored to you. It looks just right (to me) on my calibrated display.

I've been to this flower garden 3 times before, but the light was not right. Yesterday evening, the sun was close to setting and the light hit the flower at just the right angle. The quality of the light really did bring out the color in the flower. That's what I wanted to capture.

So let me walk you through the all the adjustments I made to this image. Here's a jpeg copy of the uncropped original RAW image from my D300 (picture control set to Vivid; saturation at normal):



- first thing I did was give it a square crop
- next I added some gaussian blur to the background
- I also needed to darken and DE-saturate the green background and the background flower (this took about five steps in Capture NX2)
- then I increased the mid-tone contrast to bring out the texture of the pedals on the central flower
- then I worked on the overal contrast a bit with the curves adjustment
- finally I fixed the blemishes on the pedals with the auto retouch adjustment

I did not increase the saturation or use "color boost." My adjustments darkened the flower a bit and that would have increased the saturation somewhat. But for at least two adjustments I actually turned the "chrominance" opacity to 0 in order not to over-sat the image.

So that's what I did. But having said that, you may be right. It might look over-saturated on your monitor. Or objectively speaking, it might even need a little de-saturation. I usually look at my own adjusted images a few weeks later and tweak them in many ways, often de-saturating them a bit. Sometimes photographers can't look at their work objectively except after some time has passed and they are not so close to the capture. So a couple weeks from now I may come back to this thread and say, "You were right!"

I think both images are fantastic, however you really managed to bring out the details in the finished product. Love it.
carrie