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Author Topic: Looking Northwest  (Read 3800 times)

Justan

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Looking Northwest
« on: August 24, 2011, 07:35:33 pm »

...
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 10:14:12 am by Justan »
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2011, 11:31:53 pm »

I like the atmosphere and tonality.

However, I think the image suffers from the whitish background in the forum, making it even darker, especially in the shadows. I looked it up on you website, and the gray background there helps a bit. I would still suggest to open up the shadows, slightly more when you know it will be presented against a white background. I do not mind the dark foreground, but opening it up would help create the sense of depth, otherwise nicely captured in the middle ground.

Justan

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2011, 11:37:52 am »

Thanks for the good advise, Slobodan.

The image also suffers due to the size reduction. The original image file is roughly 9,600 x 3,900 pixels, where one can see a lot of details in the foreground and first range on the right. I used a screen capture program (Gadwin) to scale the image to fit my web site, and doing that “cost” a lot of the foreground details, and by the time it’s scaled again by the LL web site, those are just about gone. But the foreground is only a tad more than detailed silhouettes so even with the huge size reduction, it’s not too bad.

Even so, i'll add a darker border to darker images in in future LL posts.

Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2011, 12:50:47 pm »

The image also suffers due to the size reduction. The original image file is roughly 9,600 x 3,900 pixels, where one can see a lot of details in the foreground and first range on the right. I used a screen capture program (Gadwin) to scale the image to fit my web site, and doing that “cost” a lot of the foreground details, and by the time it’s scaled again by the LL web site, those are just about gone.
That's a rather odd way of scaling down, isn't it? Why not use Lightroom's export, or adjust the size in Photoshop? I suspect you'll get a much better result.

Jeremy
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Justan

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2011, 12:22:19 pm »

Why do you say it’s odd? Gadwin is a great tool. I use it regularly.

The image above has about 8% of the pixels of the original. I don’t know if there is a way to remove about 92% of the content of anything and expect much by way of fidelity to the original.

Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2011, 12:52:14 pm »

Why do you say it’s odd? Gadwin is a great tool. I use it regularly.

The image above has about 8% of the pixels of the original. I don’t know if there is a way to remove about 92% of the content of anything and expect much by way of fidelity to the original.

I don't doubt it's good for generating screenshots but using screenshots seems to me to be an odd way of getting an image for web use. You're relying on whatever scaling is used to put the image on screen, which may or may not be the kind of scaling that PS or LR would use to generate a similarly-sized output jpeg.

Maybe I'm simply wrong (it's not that unusual): I'm sure someone will know the answer.

I have a preset in Lightroom that produces a suitable jpeg for posting to this site: maximum 1200 on the longer side, 80% quality, etc etc. It makes life very easy.

Jeremy
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Justan

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2011, 01:31:02 pm »

What I do is to scale the image in PS and then do a screen capture from there. The newer reproductions on my web site are a product of this and aren’t too bad, but the ends of the spectrum (light and dark) do drop off. I attribute that to the size reduction, but I could be wrong. I link the images here and that process reduces the image again to the one you see above.

In the past I followed a multiple step procedure defined by someone here to use PS for making jpgs for web use. I keep the notes for that procedure by my desk. In side by side comparisons there wasn’t much difference between that and using Gadwin, and it takes a lot less time to do a screen capture.

But I’ll test again as it never hurts to re-evaluate periodically.

Since the site had a software update, I've not been able to link an image and get more than 800 pixels on the long side.

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2011, 01:36:48 pm »

... You're relying on whatever scaling is used to put the image on screen, which may or may not be the kind of scaling that PS or LR would use to generate a similarly-sized output jpeg...

I would agree with that. If I am not mistaken (and I am sure Mr. Schewe will correct me if I am), both LR and PS use different (less precise) algorithms for display than for final output rendering.

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2011, 01:38:38 pm »

What I do is to scale the image in PS and then do a screen capture from there...

And if my previous post is correct, then all you are doing is screen-capturing an already inferior rendering.

Justan

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2011, 02:02:57 pm »

I would agree with that. If I am not mistaken (and I am sure Mr. Schewe will correct me if I am), both LR and PS use different (less precise) algorithms for display than for final output rendering.

Out of my expertise. I figure the dpi of the display is going to be more or less constant and that appears to be what Gadwin captures. My guess is that by reducing the content by about 92% there is no way around a lot of lost detail.

I’ll run a test to use PS to make the jpg and post to see if there is a difference.

Justan

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2011, 02:20:33 pm »

Here ya go

Image made with Gadwin



link to larger image: http://www.justan-elk.com/Images/Mountains/LookingNorth.jpg

Made with PS per the notes below:

(1) Open the PSD and leve it in 16 bit ProPhoto for now.
(2) Resize the image with resampling selecting the PPI and pixel dimensions you want (96PPI is a decent average for most contemporary displays) and maximum dimension of 800 pixels will work for many. Make sure the resampling method is set to BICUBIC SHARPER.
(3) Go to Edit>Convert to Profile, select sRGB as the destination space and make sure Black Point Compensation is checked. This is vital.
(4) Go to Edit>Mode and select 8 bits per channel.
(5) Go to File> SAVE AS, select JPEG and set the quality to 10 or more




link to larger image: http://www.justan-elk.com/Images/OverSize/LookingNorthFromCrystal_Panorama3.jpg

Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #11 on: August 27, 2011, 03:28:00 am »

Chalk and cheese. Look at the sky.

Jeremy
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Looking Northwest
« Reply #12 on: August 27, 2011, 09:35:30 am »

Chalk and cheese. Look at the sky.

Jeremy
Yup. Photoshop wins.
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-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)
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