Perhaps because of the plants complexity I find it a difficult shot.

[JBW]

[Shadowman]

Looks ok to me, are you trying to achieve maximum sharpness throughout the image?

[JBW]

Looks ok to me, are you trying to achieve maximum sharpness throughout the image?

no just a good balance between the still rolled up leaves and the open ones.

[Brownbear]

Hi Brian,

Beautiful capture. I adore the soft look, the soft green colour and the beautiful detail you captured in the leaves. The background is a bit busy. If you try this shot again, another position or getting closer might be worth a try.

[FrankMi]

no just a good balance between the still rolled up leaves and the open ones.

For that, you'll need to increase your depth of field or, depending upon your point of focus, you might be able to get away with shifting the focus point back a bit.

[ajohnw]

You could process it a bit more if you wanted Brian. This shows the effect of another use of levels. I've mapped the main elements of the histogram into the entire jpg colour space and then adjusted the mid grey slider to suit. That slider changes the "brightness spread" after a fashion - best to try rather than me try to explain.



The busy background effect is mostly down to the colour contrast via the red. It's best to try and pick an angle where the tones and colours are even if you can. I can show you what I mean via rawtherapee - lab adjustments - ch custom curve - locate the red on the scale and drag it down. Really I should have used more than one point on that to narrow the range a bit but this shows the effect of keeping local stronger colours out of the background when they are blurred.



GIMP will do LAB adjustments as well but they are rather difficult to use. At least I haven't got my head round them yet.

John
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[Manfred M]

Brian - I think John has nailed it. The red in the background is distracting, and inspite of the shallow DoF, our eyes are still drawn to the bright part of the image.

That being said, the background is still too busy for my taste; something this complex needs to stand on it's own. A heavy crop on the left side of the image (John's version) might give you a stronger composition.

[JBW]

Brian - I think John has nailed it. The red in the background is distracting, and inspite of the shallow DoF, our eyes are still drawn to the bright part of the image.

That being said, the background is still too busy for my taste; something this complex needs to stand on it's own. A heavy crop on the left side of the image (John's version) might give you a stronger composition.

As far as I can see John's crop is the same as mine but he has removed the red in the background?

[JBW]

You could process it a bit more if you wanted Brian. This shows the effect of another use of levels. I've mapped the main elements of the histogram into the entire jpg colour space and then adjusted the mid grey slider to suit. That slider changes the "brightness spread" after a fashion - best to try rather than me try to explain.



The busy background effect is mostly down to the colour contrast via the red. It's best to try and pick an angle where the tones and colours are even if you can. I can show you what I mean via rawtherapee - lab adjustments - ch custom curve - locate the red on the scale and drag it down. Really I should have used more than one point on that to narrow the range a bit but this shows the effect of keeping local stronger colours out of the background when they are blurred.



GIMP will do LAB adjustments as well but they are rather difficult to use. At least I haven't got my head round them yet.

John
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I saw the red as framing points but distracting points is apparently a more accurate description. It seems to be a technique that I need to work on. I am going to have to get involved in layers. As we seem to be moving into the rainy season the time may be fast approaching.

[ajohnw]

Manfred means crop after the red is removed Brian but I know your not keen on rawtherapee. You could try cloning the red bits out. Another way might be to use GIMP's foreground select tool. Read the help but basically you paint a line passing over all of the colours in the object that need selecting and it uses those under it to select. Once selected you can use things under the colour menu to change it however you like.

One thing I should have mentioned on background blur is that ideally it wants to be slight rather than heavy but that's not really possible on macro shots. The best way to use blur is to simulate what we see by eye when we actually look at something - we can see all round the object what ever it is but not clearly. In practice it's not an easy thing to do. Done correctly it makes things stand out. The brain sees it that way automatically. The technique can be seen on the TV at times and in advert posters and all sorts of things. Mind you I have heard the UK free TV is better than many places in the world. Eg An incredible take up of video recorders on a per house basis - highest in the world as there are things worth recording. No idea if this is true though but having watched free TV else where at times do wonder.

John
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[Manfred M]

As far as I can see John's crop is the same as mine but he has removed the red in the background?

Bryan - I was referring to the removal of the distracting red colour, not the crop itself. I was thinking of something along these lines for the crop to get rid of some of the distracting background that is not adding anything to your image.