Any Saving These?

[a231pacific]

Sorry, Firefox crashed and posted twice.

[a231pacific]

And the winner is....John West, by a nose, followed by Christine and Janusz.

John's had the least amount of processing on the nose and it still looks natural. Christine's looks just a bit too uniform and flat on the right side, otherwise, quite good. Janusz went too heavy on the dodge tool and you can see the brown blotches it produced, plus the windshield and number boards just don't look right.

John's had the nicest clouds, but all were excellent and all did well with the side of the train. The reflection off the depot windows (just guessing) on the right side of the train really make this shot special.

Will, try to get it as much like John did and you have a winner. If you don't have CS2 and the highlight/shadow tool, does anyone have a trick to produce the same effect? Local area contrast enhancement works like shadow recovery, but we want the opposite effect of highlight recovery. Any ideas?

Michael Allen

[JRMDC]

Originally Posted by a231pacific

And the winner is....John West, by a nose, followed by Christine and Janusz.

I've got no problem coming in last in this particular competition.

Janusz went too heavy on the dodge tool and you can see the brown blotches it produced, plus the windshield and number boards just don't look right.

In the spirit of learning, and for the record, I did not use a dodge tool. (You can read what I did, step by step, in my earlier post.) I completely agree on the windshield and number boards, but I don't see any brown blotches. Well, actually, there are some on the dark side of the nose, but I didn't tamper with that side at all and I see those in the other efforts. What are you referring to?

[Will]

Thanks for all the help again, even if its not accepted least I learned more about photo processing

Anyways I'm using CS3 for Mac atm, so I have been using the shadow/highlight tool. As I said before I used the magnetic lasso to try to adjust only the brighter spots but leave the background alone, all in all it looks pretty similar to John's version. Is there anything particular in the latest version I posted I should be concerned about? I played around with the nose its self a bit more but couldn't really come up with anything satisfactory.

If anyones bored, the full set of photos from the trip (all 3 were from a trip at Christmas) are at http://railfan.homeunix.com/linpha/

As for the light at the back, I believe that would have to be off the sun reflecting on a snow bank as I can't recall any trains coming up behind when I took the photo.

[John West]

Just remember all this free advice is worth every penny you paid for it.

[Will]

Well for an update I tried submitting the version I posted ( http://railfan.homeunix.com/photo6.jpg ) and got a new rejection reason:

Reason(s) for Rejection:
- Undersharpened (Soft):

Any opinions? to my eye doesn't seem overly soft

[John West]

Option one is to see if you can sharpen it more. The nose of the engine looks sharp to me, but if the screener says its soft, well, maybe he sees something we don't. You can give it a shot, see how it looks to you, and resubmit with a note that you have sharpened up as much you can before the funny stuff sets in.

Option to two is to give up. Maybe the message here is the screeners just don't like the picture. I like it because of the lighting. I really like the lighting. But me and the screeners don't always see eye to eye on "interesting" lighting. The lighting is definitely non-traditional. The picture IS "crop challenged", in the sense that it is a bit tighter than ideal on the left and bottom (hopefully you have used every available pixel in those areas!). And there is the blownout nose issue.

If truly the issue is sharpness with the screener, I'd see if you can improve on it, resubmit, and see what happens. But one more reject and I'd count that as a good picture for your personal collection. We all have our personal collections. Like the reject I use as an avatar above.

John

[JRMDC]

Originally Posted by John West

But one more reject and I'd count that as a good picture for your personal collection. We all have our personal collections. Like the reject I use as an avatar above.

John

You must be really bitter about that rejection; I think you've mentioned it before!!!!

[John West]

I'm bitter about ALL my rejections. But after awhile I get over it. Actually, now that I think about it, the worst part is having to remodel the house to have enough wall space to hang prints of all the rejected pictures.

John

[JRMDC]

Originally Posted by John West

I'm bitter about ALL my rejections. But after awhile I get over it. Actually, now that I think about it, the worst part is having to remodel the house to have enough wall space to hang prints of all the rejected pictures.

John

ROTFL!

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