Any chance of critique?

[hoffstriker]

I took this and used no PP whilst all I have at my disposal right now is Picasa (new laptop will be here in about three days) and for some reason can not get it to look any better. Am I missing something? I'm about ready to throw myself on the sword cause I can not make this look even acceptable. Basically, any recommendations are welcome.




Canon 20d / 28-80 / 5.6 / 1/320th / 100 ISO / Brookfield, WI / 4-12-10

Thanks

[PopsPhotos]

I pulled the curves into the standard "S" curve in PS7, just as an example. Next, I'll go into Picasa and see what I can do there.



Pops

[PopsPhotos]

This is what I did in Picasa. I clicked tuning and pulled the fill light and highlights up about 10% and pulled the shadows up until I liked the background, about 60%. Then I went to effects and sharpened about 50%, which I think is too much, now that I see it on the big screen. I clicked the neutral eyedropper on the white petal.



Neither of these is what I would call finished, but I have only about 5 minutes, just now.

Pops

[john w revie]

quick selection of the flower to its own layer some curves and blur to the background / curves and saturation to the flower layer crop and frame.




John

[Sahil]

Well the first thing I laid my hand on for this pic was Levels, then the curves.

I haven't sharpened this one, as I feel the fuzzy look is better in this one.



Here is the sharpened version

[PopsPhotos]

To respond to your PM, I did the Picasa changes on your originally posted photo. I overdid it badly (sorry) but things are a little rushed at the moment. Just remember that you have more than the basic controls in Picasa by getting into tuning and effects. There are probably other subtle controls available with Picasa that I haven't found yet, but those are the ones I use for quick'n'dirty.

To answer your basic question, yes, you will want and need more powerful tools to work over your photos. Wander about in ebay and you will find legal copies of earlier versions of PhotoShop available for very reasonable prices. I picked up PS7 for about $10 and PSE7 for less than $25 in the door. (I paid more than I needed to for the PSE because I was impatient.) I also have Image Expert, which you can't get anymore and a couple of other limited editors that I don't use very often. I have GimpShop, but haven't learned to use it, yet. It has some pretty good reports here and elsewhere.

Pops

[Geoff F]

As an alternative method; I have simply made a duplicate layer and set the Blend Mode to Soft Light.

[IMG][/IMG]

I think a little extra tweak with Curves, or similar, plus a tiny bit of selective sharpening would also help. But I wanted to show the effects of just one simple alteration.

[Colin Southern]

Correct WB -> Add Vibrance -> Sharpen.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the PM clarification. Yes - white-balancing and vibrance in ACR, and sharpening in CS4 (300 / 0.3 / 0).

I took a stab at the mortar being neutral gray, but It's probably added too much cyan to the greenery in the foreground -- but at least the flower looked roughly right. To be honest, I was waiting for an auction to finish and I only had about a minute to do it ... so it's a bit rough.

[barrydoig]

I think you need a more advanced programme than Picassa to do justice to this image. I used Photoshop Elements 6, and selected the flower. I tightened the selection around the flower using Select>Modify>Contract and inverted the selection. Then I used a medium Gaussian blur on the background. I reinverted the selection and used Levels on the flower to give it a bit more punch. Then some cloning around the edges and removal of some spots on the flower.