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Paul Davey
01-12-2008, 05:26 PM
Royal Spoonbill strutting down a sandbank at Toko Mouth in Otago, New Zealand. New Year's Eve 2007, late afternoon, fine weather. I like the neutral pose of the legs and the placid expression of the bird, with a perfect outline and posture against the stark blue background. Photographed at eye level from a kayak. This image is almost identical to the original. Only difference is I have cropped slightly from the right - just a little bit. I have also straightened the horizon, yes, straightened. But have retained the original, mind you.

Fujifilm Finepix S5600
Manual Mode
1/1200 sec, ISO 100-200, f/3.4, 10x optical zoom at 380mm

Taken on a five megapixel camera, my only one. The resize has not done it justice. It really is stunning in all it's resolution glory. But thats what to expect at 800 pixels. :(

Please do comment and make suggestions. They are always welcome.

Paul

Alfred Forns
01-12-2008, 07:03 PM
Paul I like the bird placement low angle and pose The raised head feather do complement the flair Very good exposure Do have a couple of suggestions and understand your concerns with manipulation

My suggestions (IMO) fall within normal image adjustments

Would crop top and bottom to have more sense of movement Would select the head (dark portion) and lighten a bit Would be like dogging in a wet darkroom The head could use a little sharpening

For best quality when you downsize the image use bicubic sharper (not smoother) Images reduced to this size can look very good Will post below just the image cropped differently I like the image very much has a great feel !!! Congrats !!!

Nonda Surratt
01-12-2008, 09:04 PM
What a wonderful bird and interesting capture,NICE

I like the crop Alfred did

Arthur Morris
01-12-2008, 09:05 PM
Lovely bird, I like Alfred;s crop. The bird, especially the head and the face, is not sharp. And the blacks are so blocked up that you cannot see the eye at all.

later and love, artie

Paul Davey
01-12-2008, 10:07 PM
Err, better hurry up and get a proper camera then shouldn't I? Regardless of noting how scaling a five megapixel file down to just 800 pixels makes my images in everyone of my threads, people still complain about the sharpness. Anyway, could probably do with a sharpen. But I don't think I can select a specific area to do so. You see, I don't have PhotoShop and instead have MS Digital Image 2006 Standard Edition which is not for advanced editing. Probably could do with an all-round sharpen anyway so will do so. To me the eye is noticeable. It is a dark red colour with gold eyelid. I'm not sure about using Alfred's crop. It makes the image like a 4:2.

So with a sharpen this image might do okay? I was thinking of entering it in the regional wildlife photography competition for amateurs. To me this is an out of the ordinary image that is distinct from the "rest". It looks quite space age, or surreal. IMO.

Thanks for comments,

Paul

JH Tugs
01-13-2008, 08:18 PM
Hi Paul,

The reason people still complain about the sharpness, despite your noting that you have a 5MP camera, is that the 5MP has very little to do with the sharpness of the images you are displaying. In one of your other threads, I linked to the same image you had posted, but from your flickr account, showing that while that image was even smaller still than the one you posted, it was sharper (as were all the sizes in flickr). Whatever MS Digital Image is doing when it downsizes your images, it has made pretty much every one I've seen look less than sharp.

If you want to do image editing on a budget, the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) comes highly recommended by almost everybody I know (all the ones that don't already have PS, that is :) ). Don't be put off by the name, or the words "Open Source" - it's considered by many to be a pretty good rival to Photoshop CS3 in terms of features, and there's a Windows download available. And the price is perfect - it's free!

If you would like to see how one of your original 5MP images can be resized, feel free to PM me with a link to one you'd like resized and I'd be happy to use a few different packages to show you the difference in the quality of the results with the same output dimensions as you have here.

j.

Paul Davey
01-13-2008, 10:45 PM
Hi John, I downloaded GIMP and upon saving the scaled-down image I was prompted to choose a quality size for the output. The default was 90 so I raised it to 100 and the results seem considerably better than MS Digital Image. However the end result became 196KB and I subsequently had to scale it down further to 600 pixels in order for it to fit under the 146KB limit. I am assuming that it will appear here relatively small. I usually scale my Flickr images down to 1000 pixels. Thanks for your help,

Paul

Christof Ruch
01-15-2008, 04:43 PM
Hi Paul,
that's actually two different operations - one is reducing the number of pixels, and there we think your previous photo editor had some very bad (=simple) algorithms. This should be solved by using Gimp, or what I could suggest is Photoshop Elements which comes on a budget and for this type of operation is also suited (I've used it myself for years, and only recently bought me the "real" thing because it is much easier to learn in forums like here when you have the same tool everybody else has).

The second operation is reducing the number of *bytes* in the image during the JPG compression on save. There, usually it is safe to stay at "High" quality or 80-90, and a sharp image will stay sharp no matter what.

So I assume you lost the sharpness during the "adjust image size" operation and not during "save as JPG".

Making any sense for you?
Cheers,
Christof

Christof Ruch
01-15-2008, 04:45 PM
Oh, BTW - I really love the picture, and the composition! Would be a shame if its lacking the required sharpness in the original, but hey, I and probably everybody else have thrown away "jewels" in hundreds...

Paul Davey
01-15-2008, 09:29 PM
Hi Chris

Thanks for the advice. I'm still a bit vague on what all this means. When you say that a lot of the people here use PhotoShop Elements which makes it easier to discuss digital workflow, is there a specific edition to go after? I see there is Elements 3.0 to 5.0 which look the most advanced. There is also a "CS3". On a budget would it be worth it to stick to Elements 4.0 or 3.0? Or should I go the extra mile to get the top of the range 5.0?

Thanks,
Paul

Ian McHenry
01-15-2008, 10:38 PM
Hi Paul
I bought my Photoshop Elements 5 from www.elive.co.nz (http://www.elive.co.nz).
I see they now have Elements 6 for about $180.00 NZ including credit card price and postage.
They also have the regular ( not extended) CS3 for about $1200 NZ all up.
Decisions, decisions !!!
Cheers: Ian McHenry

Paul Davey
01-15-2008, 11:13 PM
Thanks Ian...just browsed the list of products under Adobe and was overwhelmed by the multitude of products available. So big I couldn't even find Elements 5.0! Think I'll just stick to TradeMe...

Paul

Ian McHenry
01-16-2008, 12:44 AM
You should be right there !!!!!
Plenty good deals there.

Christof Ruch
01-16-2008, 11:58 AM
Hi Paul,
the numbers of Photoshop Elements numbers are really the versions, they tend to put out a new version each year. For Intel PC, current is Photoshop Elements 6.0 and it's about 80€ in Germany. I can really recommend it (though I used version 5, but would always go with the latest given the Adobe upgrade prices are quite high).

What I was saying is that most people here seem to be using the "real" Photoshop, which has strange versions like 7.0, CS, CS2, CS3. But this is a pro tool and costs > 1000€.

Hope that helped,
Christof

Paul Davey
01-16-2008, 04:05 PM
Hi Chris

Thanks for the help. I think I'll stick with getting Elements 5 or 6.0 for now.

Paul

JH Tugs
01-20-2008, 10:25 AM
Hey Paul, you mentioned I think that you're a student? Don't forget to check out Adobe's rather splendid educational discount program - assuming it's valid in NZ as well.