Red, red rose

[Nancy Bell]

With winter firmly established, I have started to experiment with photographing flowers indoors. Here I tried to show the deep velvet red of this rose against a black bkgd. I did lower the saturation on the reds, but really need some outside eyes for advice. It seems to me that the colors appear blotchy and lost an overall glow I originally had.

Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 100 macro f2.8, tripod, ISO 100, 1 sec, f14, twin lights macro flash with diffusers, flash comp -2/3.

C & C most appreciated.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Absolutely STUNNING, Nancy! I don't see any "blotchi-ness"... REALLY like the sharpness on the central parts of the Rose... and a bit of fade on the top and bottom...greens are great!. Wonderful work with the flash. What do you think about a bit more room all-around? Or maybe a bit more vertical! Colors and image depths are wonderful!

[Daniel Cadieux]

Reds look great to my eyes too (and they look very nice set against the black BG). Spectacular details on the petals. I kinda wish you had more canvas below and there is what looks like a small red clone mark above the flower.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely image, I would suggest a slightly smaller crop or taken from further away this would have given a little more DOF. Love the colours, the edge of the frame top left is not black apart from that love it!

[Nancy Bell]

Thanks all! No problem adding canvas since it is all black. I already added canvas to the top and although I simply cannot see the bits that Daniel and Jonathon see, I did have to do come clean-up from the auto-fill content aware and must have missed some.

[Don Jacobs]

Beautiful!!! Love the details. I have so much trouble with REDS. Very nice contrast with the black background as well.

[Diane Miller]

If you use ACR (PS or LR) the default Camera Profile of Adobe Standard (in the Camera Calibration section) will often bash reds and yellows for Canon cameras. They don't look bad here, but lowering saturation should be your last resort. First try the other camera profiles and then increase whatever values you can in the tonal and color corrections. It's like contrast -- increasing gives better results than decreasing.

[Mitch Haimov]

Very nicely done, Nancy. You handled the reds well--they don't appear overly saturated and retain plenty of detail. I only wish you hadn't clipped that one sepal.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Nancy. Having not seen the original reds of the flower, I would say your reds look good, as presented. Overall, this is a striking image and a few very minor tweaks will put it over the top. I see the slight blemishes that Daniel and Jon note - a quick fix. If I look closely, the background is not completely black - there is some greenish noise (?) mixed in - this should be another easy fix. (You might try adding black to the blacks in a Selective Color adjustment layer.) I would wish that the tip of the sepal wasn't clipped by the bottom of the frame - if you do have a little extra room at the bottom, this would be another easy fix. Excellent work!

[Nancy Bell]

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions and excellent eye sight! "Black" bkgd was a jacket with a bit of a weave texture that probably created the green noise. I just purchased a piece of black velvet and hopefully that will be better. Will attend to other suggestions.