Lake Norman Dinner Cruise

[FrankMi]

This was an experiment to see if I could recover an SOOC small, soft, JPG image using the Topaz InFocus. I managed to get the image sharper but somehow it just doesn't 'feel' right and I'm not sure why. I was thinking of finding a way to make it look more realistic but I'm not too sure what that would be?

Might be better to just trash the photo and start over again, which is probably the best way to go in any event! Oh well. It's a learning experience.

[Donald]

Yeh - I think it's too overcooked, Frank.

The composition is super. Can you get the chance to re-shoot this scene?

[FrankMi]

I'll probably have to wait until spring but I would love to go back and shoot this again with my DSLR.

[PhotoRob]

I like it Frank - maybe a tad soft, but the comp. makes up for it - that in South Carolina, or are you on a walk-about?

[MrB]

When I first saw this picture, I liked it - technology, old and new, is always fascinating to me. But then I read the comments, which prompted me to want to learn and understand more about what was wrong with it:

Donald wrote "I think it's too overcooked". Do you mean that the original shot was over-exposed, Donald, or that Frank has processed it too much?

Robert wrote "maybe a tad soft". Although the posted image is only 640x480, on my screen it looks as though Frank has sharpened it effectively. So am I not looking at it correctly, Robert, or are you referring back to the original SOOC?

Finally - Frank, I wondered if a wide-screen (16:9) crop to exclude the foreground vegetation would make a better or worse image?



Philip

[Donald]

Donald wrote "I think it's too overcooked". Do you mean that the original shot was over-exposed, Donald, or that Frank has processed it too much?

Philip - What I meant was that the processing has resulted in it having a 'unreal' feel to it, for me. It's certainly not over-explosed. I'm not suggesting it's necessarily 'wrong', but that it renders a very stylised image.

[FrankMi]

I like it Frank - maybe a tad soft, but the comp. makes up for it - that in South Carolina, or are you on a walk-about?

Hi Robert! I live about a mile from the North Carolina border but this location is at the north end of Lake Norman in NC, well over an hour away. I'll need to get back for more photos when the weather warms up. The original image was both small (640x480) and soft but I liked the composition and wanted to see how far the Topaz InFocus and DeJpeg could go.

This was my first attempt and as I get better with the Topaz Labs bundle I am expecting the results to improve, particularly as I work with fresh RAW images from my D3100. I have a lot of P&S JPEG images that are up to 10 years old that I can't reshoot which is why I'm working with trying to get the best out of them that I can.

[FrankMi]

Frank, I wondered if a wide-screen (16:9) crop to exclude the foreground vegetation would make a better or worse image?

Hi Philip! My plan is to reshoot with my DSLR. This image is so small that if I crop it, I'll likely end up with about a dozen pixels for the entire image! Just kidding, but when I reshoot, I'll certainly keep this cropping in mind. Thanks for commenting!