Two Bridges

[Kent Wilson]

This is a photo of the Narrows Bridge in Indiana. Canon 20D, Canon 17-85@17mm. Exposure: 1/2 sec, f/22, ISO 200, Exp Comp -2.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Kent,
Welcome to the forums! I like what you have compositionally. All the lines are very pleasing and frame the image very well. On my monitor........the tree leaves and water reflection are looking over sharpened/noisy????..........otherwise my only nit.......don't know if you were able to do it....was to crouch down a little to get the full curve of the BG bridge and see the entire beige arc.
Well done overall,
Roman

[Kent Wilson]

Thanks, Roman, for the useful feedback. I agree that the image would be improved by showing more of the second arc.

As for sharpening, I used Nik sharpening on display, and reduced the opacity to about 85%. I tried following the scheme Artie suggested in a post on preparing an image for posting on BPF, but the sharpening on this image was way too much. Artie's suggestion (this was to be included in an action) was

"With 800 pixel images to be used for the web we do two rounds of sharpening. The first round is at 300/.3/1.This is followed by another round at 100/.2/0." Of course, he explicit;y states that this is a generic type suggestion that usually works for his images. I don't know if I did something wrong, but my mileage varied. Perhaps my IQ was too poor? Anyway, that's why I went to Nik.

[Robert Amoruso]

Kent,

I am less aggressive on the USM. What I do is: 1 round of USM at 175/.2/0 the 3 rounds at 125/.2/0. I then go into the history state and back of a round of USM at a time to get where I want it to be. Usually the first 3 rounds is enough. That generally leaves me with a perfectly sharpened image. I try to do all the JPGs this way to save time but will occassionally do a creative sharpening using NIK. I try to make my workflow fast as possible.

I live the composition - very unique as it draws you right into the image. Well done.

[Leroy Laverman]

I've had good success (IMO) with using the techniques Bruce Fraser talks about in his book "Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop CS2". The idea is the sharpen through a blurred edge mask and then change the blending mode of the layer so that only the midtones are sharpened fully. This method gives good results and usually avoids the appearance of halos. If there are halos a simple black brush on the sharpening mask fixes it right up. From what I understand from his book this is the basis of the PhotoKit sharpening system from Pixel Genius that he helped to develop. You can record your own actions which speeds this process up considerably.