Melancholy tree

[Spam]

Working on my sharpening, which I think has improved quite a bit due to some useful tips and links in previous posts. I thought afterwards I should have shot this with a larger aperture and blurred out the background vegetation, but then the trunks overhead would have been blurred too, as they were stretching towards me. (I tried to do something in post with masking and blurring, which looked okay at a distance but pretty fake at any normal view.)

[Manfred M]

I think you've done a pretty good self-assessment on the image, although I think you might be being a bit hard on yourself.

This is an image that is really busy and wonder if B&W was the best way to go as everything just seems to blend together and the tonal values are clumped at the left hand side of the histogram.

My other thought is that the image has a very muddy look to it. One thing that is critical in most monochrome images is to have a full range of tones from black to white. In an 8-bit jpeg image you have a maximum of 256 shades and you need all of them. Set your black point and white points properly and you will have a stronger, less muddy looking image.

[Spam]

This is an image that is really busy and wonder if B&W was the best way to go as everything just seems to blend together and the tonal values are clumped at the left hand side of the histogram.

My other thought is that the image has a very muddy look to it. One thing that is critical in most monochrome images is to have a full range of tones from black to white. In an 8-bit jpeg image you have a maximum of 256 shades and you need all of them. Set your black point and white points properly and you will have a stronger, less muddy looking image.

Thanks for that, Manfred. Here's my own attempt at setting the points, wanted to get it up here to compare:



One query: Is it okay to have 100% white and 100% black? I've always understood that one should should have some tone in both ((at least for printing).

Also, for interest's sake, here's the colour image. There's much more distinction between the tree and background, but I don't prefer it.

[Shadowman]

Nice edits.

[Manfred M]

I think we likely set the black and white points roughly the same. That's just a high-level visual opinion, without getting in there with the eyedropper tool and taking spot measurements.

While you may prefer the B&W version, you get a lot better separation between the tree and green leaves in the background, and in some ways this results in a less confusing image (at least to my poor old eyes!).

[FootLoose]

I prefer the colour version, too. As Manfred has mentioned the contrasting colours separate the subject from the background

[IzzieK]

Nice edits but I prefer the coloured version too...

[PRSearls]

That is a very interesting subject. I like the sepia tone of your original post but I can see the improvements in #2 and #3. I'm not sure if I like the color version better but the background is very busy and competes with the tree in the monotone versions. Masking the tree and blurring the background would be one solution. Masking is something I struggle with so I can't give you any other hints. Good job on spotting this tree. If you can photograph it again with different lighting, it may have a completely different appearance.