When I was in theatre school learning stage management, our production manager used to say, check everything before the show and then ask yourself what can go wrong. It saved many a disastrous opening night.
Shangara:
As a photographer, I concur. Anytime I go out on assigment, I try to figure out in advance what "might go wrong" and develop a "plan B" and sometimes a "plan C." Only about twice in my life have I had to fall back on plan C, but I was glad I had thought it through and was able to pull off the assignment. This is what separates the professionals from the "recreational" photographers. ;-)
When I "play" with new techniques, I'm more inclined to do what you suggest. I will choose a variety of images, and then "push" them until I "break" them. In other words, try reducing the resolution till I can see jaggies, pushing the unsharp masking till I can see a halo, etc. From that I can draw some empirical understanding, and apply that to similar images in the future.
After all, how can you know that you've gone too far, without actually crossing over the line? It's simple enough to pull back and do it again. I learned this when making color prints 20 years ago. If you "think" your print is about 10 CC's too blue, you can change the setting to add 10 CC's of yellow. But often you'll get the print run through it's processor/tube/cycle and find that it's still a bit blue. ;-)
So, instead, if you "think" it's 10 off, go instead to 15 or 20 units. If you are right, then you've gotten the image too yellow, and can interpolate how far to pull back (perhaps 15). If you' think that it's 10 and decide to go with 7 units just to play it safe, then you find that you are still too blue, then you've made an error in judgement and will probably had to do one more print to get closer and then another before you get the result you intend.
Makes more sense (and fewer iterations) to know for certain yo've gone too far whether it's with color, sharpening, etc.
David
David Riecks (that's "i" before "e", but the "e" is silent) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.riecks.com/ Midwest/Chicago ASMP * ph/fax 877-646-5375
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