[Charlotte]

Finally uploaded my first macro image What d'you think?



This is straight from the camera. I decided against doing any post-processing, as I don't feel it needs any ... but what do you think? I'm very pleased with it, but I'm after some unbiased opinions. All c+c welcome!

[nichpr]

Charlotte, I don't disagree - this is a perfectly lovely image as is.
Could it benefit from some post processing? I think it could. And since you explicitly said you didn't think it needed any (can you say "Red Flag"?), I fully expect that you will be the beneficiary of a lot of thoughtful input.
- Paul

[Charlotte]

LOL Paul, thanks for your very cagey almost-input Please expand on what post-processing work you think it needs? I'm after useful feedback here

Ok, here's what I thought: Maybe a little sharpening + saturation, but just on the little yellow thingies (I forget what they're called ) but not very much, as they are not naturally dark or saturated. The image pretty much shows the colouration of the flowers as they really are. I did wonder if the white petals have a cyan tinge, but this may be a reflection from the green BG, or even an optical illusion because the BG is such a deep green - at higher res they look whiter. I also thought a thin white inset border might set it off nicely. However, I thought I might get away with not tasking myself to those adjustments, or it might never find its way out of the depths of my image editor So I decided to post it here first + get some reactions on the 'as is' look If I need to do adjustments, then I will; if not, then I won't

[stepheno]

Hi Charlotte - very subtle colours, good bokeh and....................................since it is in the critique forum..........................it's not sharp. With flowers it is usual to pick the stamens as the focal point but whichever bit you do pick as the FP it needs to be tack sharp.

[Markulous]

Looks good as is, but I'd probably have a faff around with it (and lose that nice fresh pleasantly soft look it has) - burn petal detail, increase stamen saturation (as you nearly say!), crop to place less central, sharpen, border

[fionaB]

it is a nice image and has lovely DoF. it isnt pin sharp but that may be with compression for uploading..... what does strike me however is that it has an overall green colour cast to it......happens so often with white flowers surrounded by a lot of grass, so yep it does need a little post processing

Fi

[P-E]

Yes agree with Fi particularly with the green colour cast......lovely bokeh though

[Charlotte]

Thanks all for your comments, very helpful

I checked the petals with the colour picker tool, 'cos the more I looked at the pic, the more the colour cast became apparent! Sure enuf, it has a blueish/cyan cast, which I will correct.

The original is pin-sharp Stepheno As Fiona says, it lost detail in the compression, plus also it's a completely unprocessed raw file, lazy me

Seeing it again this morning, the stamen (thanks Stepheno) do look a bit anaemic ...

So, I shall do what I should've done in the first place: Fix the colour cast, sharpen, saturate, + have a go at a border, then upload the result for your scrutiny I might also, as Mark suggests, try burning the petals; I did purposely underexpose slightly, to ensure no burnt highlights + maximise saturation, but it does look a little dull, + as Stepheno points out, you can't see much detail. I'm sure a bit of brightening will bring out the lovely fine detail in the petals that I can see in the original I won't crop it tho' Mark, as I think it suits the central placement, + I particularly like the curves of the bokeh where they fall within the frame

Thanks again for your helpful comments

[RichW]

Hi Charlotte,

Love the image, really like the composition, so I hope you don't mind I've used it to further my Lightroom education . This is the result:

[Rob Barron]

You summed up the point about post-pro in your second comment Charlotte as you said this is from a RAW picture and has had no pp work done at all. This is one of the common misconceptions of RAW files as the fact is RAW files are actually designed to be processed and not to be used straight from the camera.

I don't mean they need their exposure adjusting and things like that, obviously we look to get that right in camera as much as possible. However, things like white balance are not going to always be right when we take a RAW file so we usually need to think about the colour temperature of the image. Rich's version above shows the white as white and the yellow as yellow. That is not because you did anything wrong in camera, it is simply that the camera is not able to balance the white on its own and needs to be told what white is in each picture. The camera makes a rough guess at it in AWB and a more targeted colour temp is applied when using WB settings (tungsten, flash, cloudy, etc) but when using RAW it leaves it to you to choose later on.

Some shots, outdoors in average daylight for example, will come out close to being right without much processing but close-ups, flowers, indoor shots, etc. will usually need adjusting.

I am certain you are right that the centre of these flowers is pin sharp on the printed version. They look a lot sharper in the adjusted version here because the dynamic range has been improved and this always shows as greater sharpness. I also like that you didn't crop too tightly as often seems to happen with this type of shot. The surrounding blurred BG gives a lovely contrast and room for the image to breathe.

Good work and great to see you giving macro a go

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlotte]

Thanks Rich for your version

I had a go too ... reverted back to RawShooter to edit the raw :

[Rob Barron]

Much better Charlotte, not quite as sharp as Rich's version but I think that is just down to slightly over-saturated yellow on yours so the anthers are blurring slightly. Having said that, I like the slightly darker green in your version and the overall picture now definitely stands on its own as a good image. Well done.

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlotte]

Thanks for your comments Rob You are quite right about raw's invariably needing processing, I was just lazy here + eagre to upload, as I never seem to get that far because I get bogged down with processing

Also, I think (unless it's just me) that when we look at our own pic's we see what we want to see, i.e. we want it to be good, so it sometimes it looks good when it isn't. If that makes sense Basically, I was too quick to upload, + must take more time to have a break from seeing the image, then go back + look again before rushing to upload! With this one, once I'd uploaded, the more I looked at it the more I could see wrong with it

I agree also that Rich's version is sharper than mine + I oversaturated. Rich, you did a really good job, especially seeing as you were working on a compressed jpg file + I was working on a raw

One thing I discovered here: I did quite a bit of sharpening, thus gained a lot of noise, so had to do some noise reduction too. I then exported to jpg, which looked too yellow. I also exported to TIFF (no further work tho') and re-exported to jpg. The result was a higher quality, more colour-accurate jpg, with very little noise, as you can see, and a smaller file to boot. Sooo I shall be exporting raw's via that route methinks, + thought it worth sharing

[ftmftm]

Hi Charlotte, great picture, i like the second one best, i think it would even better with a boarder round, but thats me i love baorders around pictures.
David