Dingle pictures

vulcan57

Was down in Dingle for a few days a week ago and took a few pics. Any C&C welcome.































Thanks for looking.

AnimalRights

Lovely views in Dingle!
I think your PP could be more vibrant perhaps.

#1 my favourite.
maybe a wee bit of sea cropped.

simonp1

Like them all, very well composed but animalrights is right a bit of PP for a bit of pop.

Simon

stabo

Some nice pics, i think you sharpened them a little too much.Yeah a little pp in saturation and contrast to make them pop a bit.

hbr

vulcan57 wrote: »

Was down in Dingle for a few days a week ago and took a few pics. Any C&C welcome.

Nice pictures! I like the Lighthouse and the night shot of the harbour. Next time bring a catapult for the street light at the top-left :-)

charybdis

They're all way oversharpened, ease back on that slider completely.

I don't think they need increased colour saturation, the muted tones suit the subject matter. There are other ways to make a photograph "pop" besides going to town on the vibrance and saturation sliders.

It also looks like you've tried to recover quite a bit of shadow and highlight detail in several of them. Again, I suggest you back off doing this. It's okay for an image to have deep shadows and you can see an example of nasty highlight recovery posterization in the clouds in the photograph of the empty berths.

Compositionally, I think I like the photograph of the houses on the cliff and the photograph of the moored boats with the mountains behind them, but I'd rather see them without the sharpening and exposure adjustments applied.

charybdis

Looking at that empty marina shot again, there's some really funky ghosting in the clouds happening along with the posterization and the light physics of it doesn't really look right. Are these HDR/tonemapped or did you just apply a heavy inverse-S curve to them. I'm guessing the cloud ghosting means some of them are blended exposures.

vulcan57

Thanks folks for all advice, thats what I need. I am still very much an amateur when it comes to Photoshop in the sense that I am never sure when something is too much or too little. I haven't really dealt with vibrancy, so a quick search for some tutorials later. As far as sharpening is concerned, again, I find it difficult to know when its too much. I have posted pictures before on this and other sites and been told they are too soft when I think they are fine. Also, lately I have started sharpening with a radius of 1 and using an amount of around 250. Before I used to use a radius of 2 and an amount of around 150 but found that a lot of pictures had that awful white "halo" around the sharpened edges. The empty marina one was an attempt at HDR, not so good as I can see now.

superflyninja

nice photos but they dont do anything for me. none grab my attention like.

vulcan57

superflyninja wrote: »

nice photos but they dont do anything for me. none grab my attention like.

Thanks for the comment anyway.

superflyninja

vulcan57 wrote: »

Thanks for the comment anyway.

Im not saying I dont like them though! I agree with the earlier posters that some PP might make them pop.

charybdis

vulcan57 wrote: »

As far as sharpening is concerned, again, I find it difficult to know when its too much. I have posted pictures before on this and other sites and been told they are too soft when I think they are fine.

You can't recover a soft image by sharpening, it's not physically possible and it's not what sharpening is meant to do.

Also, I wouldn't worry about people suggesting your images aren't sharp. Lack of sharpness is probably the most hollow criticism of an image I can imagine.

vulcan57

I've just taken four of the photos and re-done them from scratch and have tried to take on board some of the suggestions here. Are these any better? Sorry if it sounds as if I am trying drag this thread out a bit, but I am learning and am looking for a little guidance. You can't get feed back or ask questions on online tutorials. Thanks again.

Original post


Re-done


Original Post


RE-done


Original Post


Re-done


Original Post


Re-done

sensibleken

vulcan57 wrote: »

Re-done

oh christ i remember climbing this needle last year in rough seas. terrifying

breadbin

a few comments from a complete amateur. i think with the last 4 you posted there, the originals were better, more colour somehow. the re-dones look too blue and monotonous.

my favourite is the ship coming towards us and the night ones are great. try not to let your shadow creep into the photo as with the one up the mountain. looks like a lovely day for it. like the use of the hillside in #5 (i think)

maybe try and add somehting in the foreground. I heard about this trick from somewhere, even if its just a rock, it can add so much to the image. hope it helps and keep taking pictures:)

also in one of the shots there is a top of a fencepost showing, be better to either get rid of it or use it more as part of the photo, seems sort of just in the way there;)

goat2

these are absolutely fab
wish i were half as good as you

joeKel73

On all those re-done photos the originals are much better imo! What software are you using?

vulcan57 wrote: »

Re-done

Here's a very quick retouch on that, upped the contrast then lowered the brightness a bit... maybe a tad too contrasty but gives more depth and detail in the sky.

vulcan57

I tend to agree with you Fotojoe, but I was just trying to incorporate some of the suggestions. Its all a learning curve I suppose and I have quite a way to go yet. I am using Photoshop CS2 with some trial Topaz filter plug ins, although I'm not that proficient at it just yet. would like to do a course in it some time soon, maybe at GTI evening course. I have just downloaded PS CS5 trial and it seems to be far better. Thanks for the constructive help though, it is always welcome.

vulcan57

goat2 wrote: »

these are absolutely fab
wish i were half as good as you

Thanks very much for that, much appreciated.

joeKel73

Sounds like you might have too much pp power there if you're only learning. A few sliders (exposure, contrast, saturation, brightness) should be enough to get you going, you'll learn what you can get from each. If you're using too many plugins and functions it's hard to remember what's contributed to the final image.

old_aussie

Thanks for taking the time to post all the great pics.

To be honest I don't know what PP is but I like all the pics.

Great to see some ot the country.

breadbin

old_aussie wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to post all the great pics.

To be honest I don't know what PP is but I like all the pics.

Great to see some ot the country.

not entirely sure myself but i'm guessing post-processing? i.e. photoshop etc

joeKel73

yeap, post processing - adjusting the image on the computer after it's taken

vulcan57

Thanks again Fotojoe, this is the kind of constructive help that a lot of us need. I will try and concentrate on contrast, brightness, exposure and saturation for a while and see If I can improve a little. Is it best to do this in RAW before actually opening the picture in PS? Since I have had the trial CS5 thats what I have been trying to do, there is far more scope than in CS2 to do that.

breadbin

vulcan57 wrote: »

Thanks again Fotojoe, this is the kind of constructive help that a lot of us need. I will try and concentrate on contrast, brightness, exposure and saturation for a while and see If I can improve a little. Is it best to do this in RAW before actually opening the picture in PS? Since I have had the trial CS5 thats what I have been trying to do, there is far more scope than in CS2 to do that.

i'd be more inclined to concentrate on the actual picture taking - don't rely on photoshop to make it look good although it is handy i guess but only another tool to help in the creative process:)

vulcan57

breadbin wrote: »

i'd be more inclined to concentrate on the actual picture taking - don't rely on photoshop to make it look good although it is handy i guess but only another tool to help in the creative process:)

Point taken, Breadbin, thanks for the advice.

joeKel73

breadbin wrote: »

i'd be more inclined to concentrate on the actual picture taking - don't rely on photoshop to make it look good although it is handy i guess but only another tool to help in the creative process:)

It's actually a very good point! Try use pp for just minor tweaks (if you need to) for a while!