bristlecone pine--Nevada

[Urbanflyer]

Back from 5 weeks of travel! So wonderful to get out. Mostly dispersed camping on BLM land so no issue of too many people. Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada. Good hiking and good 4 wheeling. Big skies and warm weather. But always good to get home! This one from Great Basin National Park's Bristlecone pine forest.




Bristlecone detail by urbanflyer, on Flickr

[pschlute]

This picture says "character" to me

[mugge]

To me it is over sharpened over saturated and so forth. It actually works, in my view. Sometimes subtleties don't work.
Cheers Ole

[xpatUSA]

To me it is over sharpened ...

With all due respect, Ole, it looks if anything a little soft on my monitor:



A plot confirms that thought:

[Manfred M]

An interesting abstract image, Judith. I agree with Ted that the image is a touch soft. I also find that the hot spots and extreme shadow areas are more distracting that they should be. They interfere with the visual flow of this image.

[Urbanflyer]

With all due respect, Ole, it looks if anything a little soft on my monitor:



A plot confirms that thought:

please tell me more about what this plot is measuring and what application produces this plot? New to me

[Urbanflyer]

An interesting abstract image, Ole. I agree with Ted that the image is a touch soft. I also find that the hot spots and extreme shadow areas are more distracting that they should be. They interfere with the visual flow of this image.

I have reworked it but would appreciate knowing if I have taken it in the direction you had in mind. I do not yet feel comfortable that I know when something is oversharp versus soft and most often comments suggest I tend to not sharpen enough. Thanks all for comments.

bristlecone pine detail rework by urbanflyer, on Flickr

[Manfred M]

I do not yet feel comfortable that I know when something is oversharp versus soft and most often comments suggest I tend to not sharpen enough.

I suspect that this is a camera movement or focus issue, rather than sharpening in post-processing issue. The texture is not as crisp as I would have expected.

[xpatUSA]

please tell me more about what this plot is measuring and what application produces this plot? New to me

Hello, Judith,

In the first image of my post you will see a yellow line. The application produces a plot showing the brightness of each pixel along that line. In an over-sharpened image, it is common to see "haloes" namely a bright region at an edge. A plot of a halo would show a peak in the bright part of the line before it plunges downward into the darker area. No such in the plot from your image.

The application is called ImageJ and is free. I use a version called "Fiji" which comes with some extra functions. Very useful for pixel peepers such as myself - perhaps less useful to your good self. I can provide links if you're interested in learning more ...

[Urbanflyer]

I suspect that this is a camera movement or focus issue, rather than sharpening in post-processing issue. The texture is not as crisp as I would have expected.

Thanks--still learning.

[DanK]

I agree that the image is soft. There is no EXIF, but I'm guessing that some of the issue might be depth of field. In any case, it looks like a capture issue, not a processing issue.

Re processing: one issue may be that in "normal" mode, contrast and saturation are linked. If you boost contrast (or clarity in Lightroom or ACR, which includes a dose of midtone contrast), you increase saturation. In this particular case, increasing contrast will provide more color contrast in the core of the image because of the increased saturation, which may be a plus, depending on your taste. But it also will increase the tonality difference between the hot spots and dark shadows, which Manfred mentioned. Notice that he darkened the bright areas on the right edge, which I would have done as well--to avoid having a bright area draw the eye out of the image.

The bottom lines, IMHO, are these:
1. With an image like this, crisp focus is essentional. That may require a tripod and sufficient depth of field.
2. With an image like this, controlling saturation and tonality separately is important. There are various ways of doing this, for example, by adding local burning and dodging.

[Urbanflyer]

I agree that the image is soft. There is no EXIF, but I'm guessing that some of the issue might be depth of field. In any case, it looks like a capture issue, not a processing issue.

Re processing: one issue may be that in "normal" mode, contrast and saturation are linked. If you boost contrast (or clarity in Lightroom or ACR, which includes a dose of midtone contrast), you increase saturation. In this particular case, increasing contrast will provide more color contrast in the core of the image because of the increased saturation, which may be a plus, depending on your taste. But it also will increase the tonality difference between the hot spots and dark shadows, which Manfred mentioned. Notice that he darkened the bright areas on the right edge, which I would have done as well--to avoid having a bright area draw the eye out of the image.

The bottom lines, IMHO, are these:
1. With an image like this, crisp focus is essentional. That may require a tripod and sufficient depth of field.
2. With an image like this, controlling saturation and tonality separately is important. There are various ways of doing this, for example, by adding local burning and dodging.

Thank you!

[Wavelength]

Excellent image, a closely similar one posted by Dan also