I have chosen not to sharpen this image, indeed I have lowered the Clarity. Does this produce a good outcome please?
Young lady at market Rarotonga-1 by Jim A, on Flickr
I have chosen not to sharpen this image, indeed I have lowered the Clarity. Does this produce a good outcome please?
Young lady at market Rarotonga-1 by Jim A, on Flickr
I would say that you are surely correct, Grahame. Shortly after post, I thought that I had not done anything with her eyes, which need both brightening and sharpening at the least. Maybe I am getting lazy? Or trying too many things too quick?
I really like this shot! That young lady has such a natural and welcoming smile that it makes me want to purchase something from her.
Two suggestions and these are only suggestions...
I might be careful about sharpening the eyes because the sharpening might accentuate the shadows from the folds of skin beneath her eyes. If she were older we might call these folds of skin "bags"...
I cropped out the folds of fabric hanging at image left. The bright colors give an "island atmosphere" to the image but, they also distract me from the lovely young lady. Cropping out this fabric leaves a slightly elongated image but, IMO, there is more concentration on the young subject.
To me the face looks too soft, but some like that look, however the arms are exceptionally sharp. Nice capture.
Nice, strong image Jim.
I expect that you used a fairly narrow aperture as the image is quite sharp throughout.
If it were my shot, I might consider the following edits:
1. As Richard has mentioned, the bright fabric on the left edge is definitely very strong. I would be tempted to crop that side of the image to reduce its dominance in the shot.
2. There is something along the right hand edge that draws my attention. I suspect removing it might improve the image.
3. The young lady has some very distinct shadows cast by her lower eyelid area. Dodging that might be worth considering as it is another area that draws too much attention.
Nice well-composed shot!
To this old man, the digital watch takes away from the traditional dress & surroundings.
Grahame, my experience of Lytebox here is that something gets done to the image that we can not control. A similar thing happens in DPR's equivalent function 'view original' - what comes up there is never my original size and looks rather soft and compressed, full-screen or not.
I can get something tack-sharp at 100% on my screen and DPR will soften it right up for me, grump. Upon occasion, I have been known to go over the top on my screen before uploading - with the result that the DPR image can look almost good.
As the tutorial says, the last sharpening step should be for the output - quite a challenge to get a good LyteBox rendering here, eh?