Hello Anthony, Saturday, March 6, 2004, 6:15:11 AM, you wrote:
AF> Attila, AF> I did the thing I hate, and copied your picture to poke and prod it myself. AF> Some of what I found puzzles me. AF> Importantly, it's a wonderful composition. I would normally say that the AF> midday sun is not good for texture and modelling, but without it there AF> wouldn't be that fabulous shadow of the gull, my favourite element of this AF> shot. AF> Now for my reservations. Why such a small file as 17.7kb? That's almost 6 AF> times smaller than you're allowed at that website (and yes I went to the AF> large version), the extra compression hurts the picture. Is this really a AF> colour photo, or a tweaked B&W shot? It is color, scanned form 35 mm negative Fuji Superia 100. I asked the lab when they developed my pics, to scan them also and burn a CD with them. I was shocked when I found out they made all JPEGs. Holy crap! They advertise themselves as "Professional Digital Photolab". So I asked if they would scan my negs into TIFFs. "No, we can scan only JPEGs" - was the answer. I know another lab which scan form negs, but their scanner is under reparation now. I will try to remove the artifacts if I can;( AF> Once the red/cyan balance is AF> neutralised I saw that the histograms for the seperate colour channels are AF> virtually the same (like a B&W shot in RGB space). Strange... I can't explain that. AF> And on the subject of AF> histograms, this shot's histogram is all squeezed into about a third or less AF> of the available tonal range. Once expanded a little there are some AF> beatifully delicate shadings and ripples on the sand that are suppressed in AF> your posted version. The "sand" is actually water. I took the photo from a bridge. AF> If you're striving for the 'high-key' look remember AF> that there ought to be one or more small accent points to establish some AF> reference extremes of tonality, but remember also that these are general AF> rules that can be broken so don't sweat it too much :-) I made some adjustments in PS and reposted the photo. I think it is a bit better now. There still remained some artifacts I can't get rid of without losing detail in the wings of the gull. So here is "version 2": http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2187289 Thanks for your suggestions. Attila
