orca

[Jeremy Roussak]

Colour or B&W?

(or neither, of course).

Jeremy

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Both/either.

[RSL]

Which is the color one?

[rabanito]

B&W. The coloured looks unnatural

[Peter McLennan]

BW for me.

Both examples are oversharpened, IMO.

[chez]

B&W is better than the colour, but boy does it look crunchy.

[Jeremy Roussak]

I'm curious about the alleged over-sharpening, as I've barely sharpened it at all. It's had my standard input sharpening in LR (amount 40, radius 0.8, detail 50, masking 25) and the output sharpening I've used for every shot I've ever posted here, namely "sharpen for screen".

What makes you think it's too much? Are you mistaking the sun reflections from the water for something else?

Jeremy

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I think it's just the contrasty light that suggests over-sharpening.
I prefer the B&W. The color doesn't add much for me.

[chez]

I'm curious about the alleged over-sharpening, as I've barely sharpened it at all. It's had my standard input sharpening in LR (amount 40, radius 0.8, detail 50, masking 25) and the output sharpening I've used for every shot I've ever posted here, namely "sharpen for screen".

What makes you think it's too much? Are you mistaking the sun reflections from the water for something else?

Jeremy

Sometimes you have to adjust the sharpening for a given image. Whatever the cause, the image looks crunchy or over sharpened.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Sometimes you have to adjust the sharpening for a given image. Whatever the cause, the image looks crunchy or over sharpened.

Where?

Jeremy

[Ivo_B]

You cannot make motion or handshake blur better by sharpening. You get this effect as result.

[Peter McLennan]

Where?

All of the water highlights in the lower two thirds, not including the animal itself.

[Jeremy Roussak]

All of the water highlights in the lower two thirds, not including the animal itself.

You cannot make motion or handshake blur better by sharpening. You get this effect as result.

Well, well. Really? I am most grateful to you, Ivo, for your pearls of wisdom, which are as relevant to this shot as they were on the last occasion.

You get an effect similar to this, but not this. What you perceive as over-sharpening in this shot is caused by ripples on water and the sunlight they reflect. Nothing more, nothing less. I could blur it, I suppose.

Jeremy

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Hard to put my finger on it, but I also often perceive Russ' images as oversharpened (I assume they are not in reality). I know you both shoot with high megapixel cameras that capture an enormous amount of details. When posting to Flickr, for instance (when I was using 5Ds), I would often uncheck "sharpen for web" at export from LR, as Flickr algorithms would apparently add extra sharpening.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Jeremy,

Perhaps you should have poured soap flakes into the water to quiet down those nasty ripples.
Of course, you would also need to ask the orca to wait quietly until you were ready to take his closeup.

(I suspect that some photographers get so immersed in post-processing details that they have a hard time recognizing natural phenomena unless they can produce them in PhotoShop.)

[Ivo_B]

Well, well. Really? I am most grateful to you, Ivo, for your pearls of wisdom, which are as relevant to this shot as they were on the last occasion.

You get an effect similar to this, but not this. What you perceive as over-sharpening in this shot is caused by ripples on water and the sunlight they reflect. Nothing more, nothing less. I could blur it, I suppose.

Jeremy

Why on earth are you asking critiques, Jeremy?
And your personal dislike to my person is very clear and I don’t care, but your expression of it is moderator unworthy.

[armand]

The subject and framing are nice but I agree with others there is something slightly off regarding the presentation, I'm not entirely sure what it is but I suspect it's related to the harsh light and the resulting contrast. I wonder if playing with decreased contrast/clarity in the water around the orca (or use them just on the orca if you used them on the entire picture) would help.

[Arlen]

Sometimes scenes with high frequency patterns (like dense leaves on a tree in the distance) look over-sharpened when reduced in size and converted to jpeg. Maybe that's what happened to the ripples here.

A nice picture of the whale, nevertheless.

[Peter McLennan]

Good point, Arlen.  Could be compression and scaling artifacts.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Why on earth are you asking critiques, Jeremy?

Because I am interested in, and gain from, useful critique. Your comment is the equivalent of turning up at a university mathematics course and solemnly informed the assembled students that 2+2=4.

And your personal dislike to my person is very clear and I don’t care, but your expression of it is moderator unworthy.

I do not dislike you, Ivo; I've never met you and am highly unlikely ever to do so. I do dislike your pontification, which reeks of arrogance. You would benefit from Eric's insight.

(I suspect that some photographers get so immersed in post-processing details that they have a hard time recognizing natural phenomena unless they can produce them in PhotoShop.)

Yes, Eric. Quite.

Sometimes scenes with high frequency patterns (like dense leaves on a tree in the distance) look over-sharpened when reduced in size and converted to jpeg. Maybe that's what happened to the ripples here.

A nice picture of the whale, nevertheless.

Thanks, Arlen - and you could well be right. Slobodan's point is interesting too.

Jeremy