Bramhall Hall

[David]

Hi All - Comments and crits accepted for the following image. This is a straight-forward single exposure, no HDR. Canon 40D EF24-105 mm lens, followed by perspective correction, cropping/scaling to give 2:1 ratio, sharpening and LCE. No extra saturation. Slight re-softening of green hedges and tree. My concern is that havng followed the recommended methods for sharpening and LCE I have over done it.






Cheers

David

[kevinbythebeach]

i like it except for the left set of stairs...its kidna distracting at first...I mena i know they are stairs but i might have tried a slightly differnt angle to open them up a little....

[Geoff F]

Looking at the full size image. I would say that you have got away with it as far as the house is concerned but those steps definitely look oversharpened to me. Maybe a bit of selective sharpening would work better.

I'm not sure that there are any hard and fast rules over sharpening. Every image is different so they all need slightly different approachs.

[Wirefox]

This is a case of the kettle calling the pot black because I have a tendency to over egg the unsharp mask but I do thing it is a tad over sharpened. I have to agree that the stairs are the big give away but I cannot make my mind up whether it is the perspective correction that is causing the odd effect with the stairs. Having said that it is a very well composed image

[peterb533]

Overall it looks good but as mentioned by other the stairs and I think the chimney stacks look a little 'blocky'. Good composition though.

Peter

[Dave Humphries]

Hi David,

Could I ask three questions;
Which order did you do the sharpening and LCE?
Was the sharpening applied at the 1024 width we see here?
What settings were used for these?

It does look a tad 'busy' in places it doesn't need to, but I cannot see black/white edges.

Compositionally, I'd take artistic license to the limit and clone out those left hand steps, in fact even the right hand ones have an unfortunate aspect to them from this angle.

Put me down with Steve as another black kettle
I'd also agree with Geoff, I never use the same settings twice for sharpening, I just go by eye and what looks right (to me at the time).

Regards,

[David]

Hi Guys - Thanks for all the replies, they are very helpful. Yes those steps on the LHS are terrible. They are terrible in the original image and I think that the only ways to tackle them are to clone them out or to re-compose from a different angle. Cloning out will be easier. The chimneys do look a bit "blocky", but that is the nature of Elisabethan brick chimneys.

Re the questions from Dave H: all sharpening etc. applied to 3000x1500 Tiff image in the GIMP (hence only 8-bits); LCE applied last (ca. 10% of Amount, 50 pixel Radius, 0% Threshold using the Gimp's unsharp mask tool); sharpening method by use of selective mask and unsharp mask adjusted by eye (cf Ron Bigelow's methods); greenery re-softened by removal of sharpening layer with 50% opacity eraser.

Thanks again to all.

Cheers

David

[Dave Humphries]

Hi David,

You may get a more controllable outcome as follows;
1) LCE (by USM) at full res (those settings looked fine to me)
2) Sharpen to taste at full res for printing, (save as TIF for future?)
3) Undo last sharpen (I assume this is possible in GIMP even after a save? Don't close and re-open though)
4) Resize to 1000px for web (and CiC)
5) Resharpen, usually with a smaller radius and lower amount to taste
6) Save for web as jpg

Hope that helps,

[David]

Hi Dave - Thanks for reply - I'll try those ideas out shortly. However, here's a reworked image wiythe offending steps removed. Also a new Url link to Web Albums on Picasa rather than Flickr.




David

Edit - new posting via Web Albums is clearly not working - more thought needed.



http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/pho...eat=directlink

Direct link works but no image posted here - even more thought needed.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi David,

I went to PBase because the free Picasa doesn't support direct linking.

Interestingly, in respect of angled detail, I note the 1500 wide version on Picasa has noticably less jaggies than the 1024 version inline above in post #1.

This is what I was talking about with d3debian in summer guests.

The latest, bigger version looks OK to me now, there are still some artefacts, but they are jpg ones, not sharpening (I reckon).

Cheers,