Last shot of the Day. Eagles watching over in young

[Steve Uffman]

Was in the Atchafalaya Basin today photographing eagle nests from a new blind (primos vision)...watched the babes yawn and look around, flapping their wings and getting ready to leave the nest. Sure have grown fast in last two weeks. Unfortunately, we did not get the shot we wanted of them being fed a nutria or a coot by the parents....but nice shots of babes anyway...which will post tomorrow.

However on the way out, we captured this silhouette just as we were about to pull into the marina...incredible sky Plus just as we were about to pick up our gear and leave the parent flew in and landed just above the nest.

Canon 5dII 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM tripod 1/40sec f/20 ISO 200

LR3, CS5 and Nik CEFX4 of darken/lighten Center, Reflector EFex

[John Chardine]

Lovely colours Steve. I like the overall tranquil feel of the image. I see some significant jpeg anomalies around the lefthand eagle and this is probably hurting IQ all over. You should be able to get this image under 250kb with a reasonable jpeg compression.

[Steve Uffman]

thanks John I see them now...frequently on dark images I have trouble ever getting them small enough to post...this was an iterative process to get inside the specs. the artifacts do not show in the original or the first Jpeg I created...but it was still massive so I did a reduction from that one....
Probably a trick to jpeg compression I don't know....original raw was about 27 MB...then much larger tif and then some progressive reductions of quality to get a file finally small enough to post on BPN...this one came from a JPEG of 7.5 MB....so probable was allowing the issues to accumulate....


any guidance on how best to do this out of LR3 or CS5 would be appreciated.....

[Kerry Perkins]

Steve, here is my guide to posting on BPN. I have been using this technique for over three years and find that it works very well, in fact delivering the best possible image for the file size.

Posting limitations are 1024 max horizontal and 800 max vertical. PS will do this for you and size your image within the 250k size limitation. To get the proper pixel dimensions, go to "file -> automate -> fit image". In the box that pops up put in 1024 pixels for the width and 800 pixels for the height and click "OK". These numbers will stay there for subsequent images unless you change them. Your image is now sized properly as far as dimensions. (Note that this constrains the image to these dimensions, so whichever way it is oriented you will be fine.) You will have to zoom the window to get it to display larger on your screen. Now, when you go to "file -> save for web and devices", you will get the interface for doing just that. In the upper right corner of that interface there is a little triangle next to what looks like a stack of paper. Click on that and a menu will pop up. In that window select "optimize to file size". In the next popup window you will see a box for "desired file size". Put 245k in that box just for a little margin of error. Click "OK" and that window will close and take you back to the "save for web and devices" interface. Click "save", give your file a name and a destination and you are good to go. You will get a full-sized image for BPN at less than 250k file size and it will be the best quality attainable by PS.

I'm curious as to why you chose the aperture. Diffraction limitation is a real deal, and at f/20 you are into a zone of guaranteed loss of sharpness. You could have gone with f/8 easily and gained valuable shutter speed in the process. I do like the colors and feel of the image.

[Steve Uffman]

Thanks Kerry, I will try that technique to export to BPN..right now I am doing it out of Lightroom to the size dimensions you suggest but frequently it comes back with a message that it cannot render an image that size ...so then I start moving the quality slider down...and are dark sliders pretty far....or I will make an export out of a reduced size Jpeg....Looking for a better method so I will try yours....


And your question is a good one about the aperture....

Funny how things work out...I had been shooting longer exposures at f/8.. bracketing some and so forth...as the sun fell, we decided that we needed to get on back to the marina....I had been having some problems with my running lights and there were large rafts of water hyacinths floating in the middle waterways due to all the high water we are having right now. Nautical twilight would be our friend for a max of twenty minutes.....so as we were picking the tripods up and the adult eagle landed, I decided to spin the dials to quickly drop the exposure 2+ stops...Hence the 1/40 at f/20..Also, note that the colors are intense but the sun is still a bit above the horizon. That was a calculated move since I felt that sun needed to be closer to the center of the frame and hence the eagles to draw the eye there....(I have taken similar shots when we let the sun get lower and you lose some of the silhouette impact as the eye focuses on the brighter spot which is well below the birds then)




You have given me something else to think about...

No doubt the f/8 shots are sharper...could probably work the exposures a bit post processing on them to get the same effect....also could play with some HDR.....

[Kerry Perkins]

Steve, all good thoughts on your part. I tend to leave the aperture alone and adjust shutter speed, always trying to optimize for the highest possible whether hand-held or on a tripod. I'm a big fan of f/5.6 - f/8 for a lot of situations.

[John Chardine]

I'll add a little detail to what Kerry said- in Photoshop Preferences-General you will see you can choose an image interpolation method. This is the method that will be used when you resize the way Kerry suggested. I set it for Bicubic (best for smooth gradients) because I find Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction) does sharpen the image in an unknown way and I want to have control over this.

With images like this that have lots of detail the jpeg compression is not so efficient and if there is noise, this will add to the inefficiency. Still you should be able to get away with 50% to come in under 250kb. At 50% jpeg quality you will not see any anomalies in the post.

[Steve Uffman]

Thanks Kerry for the tip...area of photoshop that I need to spend some time on. ran into the same problem when I was using Nik Sharpener Pro. Instructor told me to resize before sharpening which I had not been doing.

have several copies of the image which I will work to pic the best and redo...this one does appear to eliminate some of the artifacts that John spotted and it was a much less iterative process. I do see a bit of a halo on the leftmost eagle..perhaps as the result of how I handled sharpening and some Nik work I experiemented with...will work to clean up and eventually repost best image

thanks to both for the help....real value to me there my friends!

[Steve Uffman]

I'll add a little detail to what Kerry said- in Photoshop Preferences-General you will see you can choose an image interpolation method. This is the method that will be used when you resize the way Kerry suggested. I set it for Bicubic (best for smooth gradients) because I find Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction) does sharpen the image in an unknown way and I want to have control over this.

With images like this that have lots of detail the jpeg compression is not so efficient and if there is noise, this will add to the inefficiency. Still you should be able to get away with 50% to come in under 250kb. At 50% jpeg quality you will not see any anomalies in the post.

Always appreciated as I find my way...mine is set to bicubic sharpener, correct?

any other tips you have would be welcomed....

I know the concept of the automate functions but really have not set any up yet...are there certain ones you guys think are essential? I know my save and flattening files needs to be addressed..others?

[Mike Milicia]

Probably a trick to jpeg compression I don't know....original raw was about 27 MB...then much larger tif and then some progressive reductions of quality to get a file finally small enough to post on BPN...this one came from a JPEG of 7.5 MB....so probable was allowing the issues to accumulate....

Hi Steve,

I am a bit confused by a couple of things here.

The first is your statement "this one came from a JPEG of 7.5 MB".
This makes me think you may have converted the TIFF at full size to jpeg first and then resized the jpeg for BPN and then tried to reduce the file size for posting?
I say this because here is no way that a 1024x704 jpeg file can be 7.5 MB. It should on the order of 2 MB at most even with no compression at all.

The second thing I noticed is that the image as posted is only 120KB whereas BPN allows up to 250KB.

I may be misinterpreting your statements but, just in case, here is a summary of the order of operations that I would recommend for
creating jpegs for the web :

Resize PSD/TIFF to final target dimensions (in this case 1024 pixels wide)
Sharpen for web
Convert to sRGB
Convert to 8 bits
Save as jpeg at quality that gets file size within desired limits

Note two things about the above steps :
1 - The file is left at 16 bit for as long as possible in the process.
2 - Conversion to jpeg is the final step

[John Chardine]

Mike- I didn't notice the file size. vBulletin (BPN web software) occasionally decides on it's own to downsize a file if it comes in too big. It does a horrible job of it and this could be the result. Steve- I use Save for Web and Devices to peg the output file size at about 245kb so I know I will not overshoot the 250kb limit.

[Steve Uffman]

Mike, John, Kerry, sure appreciate the help...the last image in this thread was done per Kerry's suggestions and as John suggested "bicubic sharpener" and at 245KB limiter. The last file should be 210KB as that was the output file from Photoshop that I uploaded...did something change or is the 120KB the first file you are referring too, Mike?

Additionally, I am pretty much self taught on this and started with only Lightroom and routinely exported images to my Smugmug website. Using the export feature there, I could export up to 23MB files to Smugmug which in turn would re-size for web but would also store the larger images for printing using their services...As a result, I became comfortable with that export process.

Then when I started sending images to BPN, most would export using the Lightroom export routine that I set up for BPN using the required ht, width and size limitations required . The size problem occurred usually on very dark images like this shot. I first saw the size issue on a Nutria in a swamp setting, then most sunset photos and etc.....so my lack of sophistication caused me to experiment with the quality sliders on the Lightroom export mechanism which worked most times.... although I never really took quality down below about 70%. .. and in some cases, as in the top image, as crazy as it might seem-I did a reduction from the jpeg that had already been created to send to my smugmug website....

Long story, but basically I reduced from a reduction...so problems accumulated

I have spent little time on the whole re-size opportunity but clearly need to get into it....only last week did I learn about resizing before running Nik Sharpener Pro 3...this popped up after asking why the advertised best practices settings by Nik for dispaly always looked way over-sharpened....

So thanks for the help and patience...You input and this site are wonderful learning tools and helping me climb the ladder step by step!

[John Chardine]

No anomalies visible in the repost Steve. Well done.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Steve,

Greetings. Creating a jpeg for bpn should really be painless. These LR export settings work for me:



The important ones are "limit file size to" and "Resize to fit Width & Height" - you can add sharpening if you wish with the Output sharpening option (I don't). You can minimize embedded metadata if you wish (I currently don't but am thinking of doing so since my images sometimes contain some personal info that I'm not sure I want to put out on the internet, even if you do minimize it leaves the color profile which is good).

Once it's all set up create a user preset and it's close to one click from your original full res image to a jpeg that works for bpn.

By the way, there are limits to what the bpn image size will support in terms of patterns in the image (which will increase the size of an image for any given quality). I've created highly patterned images (most for OOTB) that would be as much as 2MB for bpn 1024x800 at full quality, which just won't work for a 250K file no matter the jpeg sharpening.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Steve Uffman]

Steve,

Greetings. Creating a jpeg for bpn should really be painless. These LR export settings work for me:



The important ones are "limit file size to" and "Resize to fit Width & Height" - you can add sharpening if you wish with the Output sharpening option (I don't). You can minimize embedded metadata if you wish (I currently don't but am thinking of doing so since my images sometimes contain some personal info that I'm not sure I want to put out on the internet, even if you do minimize it leaves the color profile which is good).

Once it's all set up create a user preset and it's close to one click from your original full res image to a jpeg that works for bpn.

Cheers,

-Michael-

thanks Michael, I have it set up the same way... a user preset for BPN..and user preset for smugmug, animoto and etc......works 90 % of the time..the 10% it does not is when the problem occurs....those files are always very dark images....when I try to run the process you describe on those I get an error message from Lightroom saying it cannot create an export file that size....normally if I take off the 245 KB limit but same dimensions, I get files in the 500-750KB range.......

One other thought, I never had the problem with LR2...not sure that is relevant....but do plan to try the same problem images on LR4.

I will be working on some images later this evening..If it occurs, I will copy the error message screen and post....

One note, when I first started seeing the error message, I posted here if anyone else had seen it...no one responded that they had....

[Steve Uffman]

Michael, here is the error message I get on certain images using the same export method you use out of LR3. I guess you have not encountered it.

[Steve Uffman]

Sorry Michael for not including this attachement

[Steve Uffman]

Hmmmm....I get a similar failure on the same image in Photoshop..says "image size exceeds size that Save for Web & Devices was designed for. You may experience out of memory or slow performance. Do you want to proceed?"

clueless here about why it occurs with certain images....I imported in LR3, then as a Smart Object went to photoshop for some minor removal of some grass items around the animals face with the healing brush, then went to Nik software, for a bit of tweaking in Cfex4 (neutral density, selective detail extractor, darken/lighten center )....that produced a 94mb tiff AFTER flattening....Clueless why so large...

When I get it into LR3 and export max quality jpeg, it creates a 23.4 MB Jpeg...which SmugMug accepts....and displays on the web...


I have seen these huge file sizes before but figured it was only if I did not flatten the image....

My machine has 20GB ram...

[Mike Milicia]

Hmmmm....I get a similar failure on the same image in Photoshop..says "image size exceeds size that Save for Web & Devices was designed for. You may experience out of memory or slow performance. Do you want to proceed?"

You will only get this message if the pixel dimensions of the image you are handing to Save for Web
exceeds what it considers to be a reasonable size for the web. The limit seems to be 3374x2241.
You should be resizing your image for BPN (i.e. 1024 pixels wide) BEFORE using Save for Web.

When I get it into LR3 and export max quality jpeg, it creates a 23.4 MB Jpeg...which SmugMug accepts....and displays on the web...

Again, for a jpeg file to be that large, the image must have on the order of 8 Megapixels, i.e. something like 3600x2400 pixels!
That's way too big for the web, e.g. the maximum image allowed by BPN is 1024x800, which is 0.8 Megapixels!

SmugMug must be "doing you a favor" by taking the image but then automatically downsizing it to proper pixel dimensions for the web.
This probably does not yield maximum quality results as who knows what algorithms SmugMug is using for the downsize.
Also, you are giving the world access to your full size images for the taking.
I just Googled and found your SmugMug web site and was able to download a 3413x2275 jpeg image! Not a good idea ...

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Steve,

Yep. Never seen that error. Once I recall an error that turned out that LR didn't understand a number like 245 but did understand 250. (no need to use 245 rather than 250 btw).

Jpeg compression shouldn't be bothered by dark images either.

Beats me.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Steve Uffman]

Thanks Mike, I apparently had a senior moment skipping the "automate" step that Kerry suggested...did that and it worked as advertised...will use my notes until its routine

curious on the download from my site of a large image....I have the ability to restrict any downloads on images by gallery...If I restrict it, when you click it pops open a copyright notice...http://blackpearl.smugmug.com/Travel...3155&k=thZFLp3 is an example....

I know that many of the pros that use smugmug do store larger images there to take advantage of the automated ordering...

I do have some that I do not restrict as I have a few friends that want some images so I allow them to get them....For example for the whooping crane gallery, I have told the biologist that I work with that she can pick the images she wants to use in her upcoming class....

Now I probably need to go back through my galleries to be certain that I have the disable download turned on for most...that used to be my default setup but I might have been sloppy not to change it back after I made the exceptions ...

[Steve Uffman]

Steve,

Yep. Never seen that error. Once I recall an error that turned out that LR didn't understand a number like 245 but did understand 250. (no need to use 245 rather than 250 btw).

Jpeg compression shouldn't be bothered by dark images either.

Beats me.

Cheers,

-Michael-

and I hope you never do...royal pain in the....Well making progress on figuring all this out....Kerry's process works well if my old mind can remember ALL the steps...there are not many but man "the old gray matter ain't what it used to be"