Ali'i Beach and Mililani

[orewakazuo]

AliiBeach5 by sixfingerman, on Flickr
AliiBeach2 by sixfingerman, on Flickr
DSC_0401 by sixfingerman, on Flickr
Launani by sixfingerman, on Flickr

Welcome comments and critiques. Trying to find the sweetspot using LAB channels with Overlay or Soft Light.

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[Manfred M]

I've never found the working in the LAB colour space particularly useful unless I was trying to get something funky looking, and you have certainly achieved that here.

Compositionally, I find your first and third image to be the strongest. The second shot of the rock does nothing for me and I think the fourth image would be improved by cropping the left side of the image. The gap between the tree and the left edge of the image do not work for me. Cropping that out will improve that shot.

Overall, the images all look to be a bit soft and need to be sharpened.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Kazou,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me.

In addition to the good and 'less good' things mentioned by others in earlier posts, I'd like to raise something else.

I see, from the EXIF data available at Flickr, you shot these using a Nikon D40 with an 18-200mm lens (probably Sigma, I know it's not the Nikon one).

I also note that you processed with PS CC and ACR, meaning the shots were RAW.

While you seem to have used most lens corrections available, you appear to have not used the Chromatic Aberration (CA) to fix that issue, which is very noticeable in the first two images and slightly in the third.

The fourth does not seem to exhibit this problem, even though shot and processed similarly, so I guess that did have CA correction applied and hence you know where to find it.

Personally, I'm not 'in' to using LAB channels and soft light/overlay, I'll just say that I find the results in all four somewhat 'over saturated' to use a rather blunt term to describe the effect. These effects will make problems like CA seem far worse than normal, which is why it's essential to fix CA before subsequent processing, including any sharpening (as Manfred suggests).

Compositionally, I prefer the third (sunset?), shot.

I hope my thoughts are helpful, Dave

[Wavelength]

Excellent images

[mknittle]

Composition looks good Kazuo, I like #4 best of the bunch though. All good advice above.

[Geoff F]

I have never been a fan of slow water scenes, Kazuo, however putting that to one side, my thoughts appear to be generally along the same lines as previous comments.

#1 is somewhat dominated by a large rock on the left side, which doesn't really add anything to the overall scene and there is a very bright spot above the rock; so I would crop slightly from the left side and a similar amount from the bottom.

#2. You have probably done all that can be achieved with that scene; but it still doesn't inspire me.

#3 is basically OK except for a bit of out of focus foliage in the top right corner; so I would crop the right side and bottom to remove it.

#4. Including that branch on the left probably seemed like a good idea but I find it is distracting from the main subject - the waterfall. So I would crop the left side. Maybe a mix of crop and clone with a balancing amount from top and bottom.

[bnnrcn]

Welcome Kazuo Nice set of images. #1 has a poster quality with those colors.For me #3 is the best composition of the set.

[orewakazuo]

Thank you all for looking over my shots and for the insight. Still have much to learn.