9 replies to this topic

[emccarthy25]

Taken with my D5500 / 18-55mm lens @ 55mm / f8 / 1/320 sec / ISO100

 

I quite liked this image, but I feel like it needs some work.  Maybe it should have been recomposed.  I'm not sure, so I'll take any critiques you have.

Attached Thumbnails

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[mikew]

I think i would have given it some crop and made the main point less central

[Merco_61]

I think I would crop this to 5:4 starting from the left. This will decenter the big water drop and make the two leaves that have their tips at the bottom of the photo stronger as leading lines as well as getting rid of the broken stem on the right.

 

I would then raise the contrast a little to make the shadows darker relative to the leaves and water. The next step would be to raise overall exposure by 1/6 or so and carefully play around with clarity and saturation to make the water pop some more.

 

I agree that it is a nice capture that can benefit from some work in post.

[emccarthy25]

Thanks for the replies. It was already pretty heavily cropped, and I was concerned it would lose some quality if I went in too much more, but I’ll try it to see what happens. I’ll also try going further with the other settings to see how it looks.

Cheers!


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[Merco_61]

My idea for the crop is to crop to a different ratio, not to change the magnification. 3:2 is seldom an ideal crop for composition.

[emccarthy25]

Ah, I think I understand.  I played with it some more, and found that cropping in more wasn't so bad.  I set a custom ratio of 5:4 in LR to lock the aspect ratio while cropping, and tweaked the properties you suggested.  Do you think the edit is better, or needs more work?

 

2018-07-04 0113 July 04, 2018-2 by Avoxocado

[Merco_61]

If you want me to, I can do something quick and dirty along the lines I outline above. Would you let me do that?

[emccarthy25]

I wouldn't mind at all.  Its always good to get other peoples perspective

[Merco_61]

 

 

I did this edit in Photoshop CC

 

The steps of the processing need interpreting as I use a Swedish version of PS.

Open

Marquee

Crop

Deselect

Brightness/Contrast

Clarity

Exposure

Clarity

 

The Marquee>Crop>Deselect gives more precise control over the crop than just going straight to Crop. The Marquee tool can be adjusted before applying the crop, the Crop tool just immediately crops to what you select.

 

In the Brightness/Contrast pane, I raised contrast +15 and brightness +8.

 

In the first Clarity pane, I set Clarity to +10 and left the saturation alone.

 

In the Exposure pane, I raised exposure +0.15

 

In the second Clarity pane, I set the Clarity to +2 and saturation to +5

[emccarthy25]

Ah, I see. So it looks like I went to far in with my change. I appreciate that you kept the droplet at the top of the image, and I agree that your edit is a bit more pleasing. Thanks for the assistance, I’ll keep working on my composition abilities.

Cheers!


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