First post. Great day along the Paria river in southwest Utah. Nikon D200, Nikkor 200-400mm lens @ 400mm, hand held with vehicle window frame support, f5.6, 1/2500, iso 400, matrix metering. Photoshop levels, hue/sat, unsharp mask.
Western scrub jay
First post. Great day along the Paria river in southwest Utah. Nikon D200, Nikkor 200-400mm lens @ 400mm, hand held with vehicle window frame support, f5.6, 1/2500, iso 400, matrix metering. Photoshop levels, hue/sat, unsharp mask.
Hi Gary - big warm welcome to the BPN family - do not hesitate to jump right in and comment on other peoples images, all we ask to start with is that you say what you like or dont like about the image - NO better way to learn,as when commenting on someone's else's image you have no emotional attachment to it.
I am going to give our fellow BPN'ers a chance to comment before offering my thoughts.
Once again - Big Welcome!!
The one thing I would take care of right from the start from this fine photograph is
that itsy bitsy branch sticking up from the bottom.
You also did a fine job in capturing the catchlight in the eye.
Doug
Fine first image. I agree about removing the tiny stick. I love the way the blue sky is similar in tone to the feathers on the bird. I'm looking at it on a small screen so may not be able to pick up as much detail as on a large monitor, but it looks pretty good to me. Great catchlight as mentioned.
Well done.
Big Warm Welcome Garry !!
Couldn't have said it better than Lance regarding comments :) Will also let other comments but will come back and give you my thoughts !! ... do have a lot of good things here and a couple of points to make note !!!
Hi Gary, I bid you welcome also! Nice pose,placement in the frame and agree with small branch removal. Good light with a catchlight in the eye. Might run a bit of noise reduction in the backround...
Gary,
Greetings & welcome. Nice detail particularly in the tail. A little noisy for ISO 400 which makes me think the levels adjustment is covering a bit of underexposure (just a guess on my part, but I used to shoot with a D200 and am familiar with its noise characteristics).
Your image contains no color management information (or any metadata). The (IMO) problem with this is that browsers show your image with different approaches to what color profile to assign. Some browsers are color managed (Safari, Firefox if you turn it on, notably Explorer does not color manage) and will color manage your image if the information is available in the metadata.
Anyway, the color of your image looks much better in sRGB (took it into photoshop and assigned sRGB) than what is in my browser. ;)
A lot of people post here without metadata, but... if you would like people to see the colors that you meant, it's best to leave at least the color profile in the metadata so the browsers can pick it up for their display. That's my advice, don't know what the moderators think.
Cheers,
-Michael-
Last edited by Michael Gerald-Yamasaki; 04-08-2010 at 10:58 AM. Reason: rephrased color management comment
Michael Would you mind being specific regarding moderators not managing the colors properly. We don't mind at all if you say this moderator does not ..... etc but I will not allow blind accusations. Please give the information or edit your post.
You are correct about color spaces and the need for calibration, if we all were in sync there would be less color issues. btw on some of your previous post I have seen some strange colors and my monitor IS calibrated and I AM using the proper profile for posting.
Alfred,Originally Posted by Alfred Forns
Greetings. I'm sorry I guess I misstated what was being omitted (I edited the post). I'm not accusing anybody of not managing colors properly. What I'm saying is that many photos posted here are posted with no metadata (including your photo of Kissimmee barred owl). I only discover this if I download the image and examine it so my sample space is small and only one of yours.
With no color profile metadata browsers cannot color manage an image, so the browsers use some default. With metadata (color profile) an image can be color managed by the browser that supports such. Safari and Firefox (with color management turned on) color manage images, while Internet Explorer does not (with or without color profile metadata).
I can't take credit for strange colors in un-color managed browsers... But for color managed browsers the strange colors were all mine ;)
Hope this makes sense. Please let me know if I don't have it right.
Cheers,
-Michael-
Michael the best quality image will be posted by saving for web since you can decide the exact size of the image. When doing so all metadata will be gone, if you use save as all metadata is retained. I do not like posting anything but the best quality possible so will continue using save for web.
When you find an image with no data .. that is the mystery but at the same time the image has been converted to sRBG automatically ... even if the person does not want to !!!
..btw great discussion !!!
Alfred,
The issue is not whether the image has been created with a specific color profile (sRGB is best for the web) but how the image reports what color profile should be used when rendering it (by printer or web browser, for instance). The image can tell a color managed browser to present it in sRGB only if that information is retained in the metadata. If the metadata has been stripped, the color managed browser has no idea what color profile to use so it uses a default (not sRGB for the browsers that I am familiar).
So, what works... What works (regarding color management) are jpegs that have at least a color profile in the metadata viewed by browsers that support color management (Safari, Firefox w/cm on, others I don't know. As I said before Internet Explorer does not support color management). With other choices, jpegs stripped of metadata or browsers that do not support color management, the viewer will not see colors as they were intended. How far off the displayed image will look if not color managed by the browser is dependent on the color choices in the image.
Different apps have different approaches to options regarding saving w/metadata, what's in the metadata, and sizing. I use Lightroom for jpeg creation from tiff, where I can specify pixel dimensions. It has a minimize metadata option which just leaves the color profile information in the metadata, but I usually leave all the metadata in the images that I post... (GPS data inclusive on some... you can see where I took a shot by using the long/lat from the metadata on Google maps, for instance ;) )
It really is better to include as much metadata as one is comfortable (but at least the color profile), IMO.
And it is best to use a color managed browser, too!
Cheers,
-Michael-
All good points Michael and you do know your profiling.
I use LR but from there they go to PS then converted for web usage. In may years of posting have not had a problem with color spaces so will continue with my work flow.
I think most problems we see here have to do with posting at RBG or not checking what the image looks like after converting to sRBG.
Okay... for grins, you might try taking the OP image into Photoshop and assigning sRGB (Edit->Assign Profile->Profile: ) and compare to what is presented in your browser. They are pretty different to my eye.
By the way, color management in browsers has only been available for a short while (on a Windows machine, only since Safari was introduced in June, 2007, a few years earlier on the Mac).
Cheers,
-Michael-
Last edited by Michael Gerald-Yamasaki; 04-08-2010 at 02:15 PM. Reason: typo
Michael My normal workflow involves an action which converts, assigns profile to sRBG etc. What I see in my computer before posting is what I see after posting. No need to change my workflow.
As I told you in a post earlier, you don't need to convert to sRGB any more since saving for web will do it for you. There are many ways of doing things and the important is the end result, I'm very happy with the way my images end up !! btw you did well on the owl re post, not an easy image to work on !!
Since there has been some fine discussions regarding your image, I just wanted to welcome you to BPN. Hope you enjoy the fine critiques and points that you will get from the pro's
Regards,
Nice discussion about profiles -I use the same workflow as AL pretty much. but back to the image at hand :)
Nice first Post Gray - agree with the above points - removing the stick - NR on the background etc.
Also - Had shutter speed to burn here - could have stopped down quite a bit, nothing in the BG to be concerned about with more DOF. In this sort of scenario - I will often go to F11 as long as I have the Shutter speed to work with (With the D3S having useable 6400+ ISO this is not usually a issue)
Most lens's tend to perform a little better sharpness wise when stopped down. Though with the 200-400 it is extremely good even wide open.
Image just needs a little tweaking.
Looking forward to seeing more :)
Thanks for the warm wecome. Can handle the branch. The color management discussion was enlightening. I use Save for Web in PS. My understanding is that Save for Web converts Adobe RGB to sRGB. If the metadata is lost when using Save for Web, would it be helpful to provide the color profile info. along with the camera, lens, f-stop etc. data?
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