New Home Page Photo

[dennbel]

That shot of the rust is not very well focused. It appears quite soft to me. I'm surprised, being it was taken with such expensive equipment.

[Kevin Raber]

Are you kidding me?  It's tack sharp.  I have a 40x40 inch print of it and you can cut your teeth on it.

Kevin

[dennbel]

Hmmm, how does it look on your monitor, because it is not sharp on mine. Very interesting. Maybe it's just a web/browser thing.

[Kevin Raber]

I have 3 monitors in the office and sharp on all of them.

[Pete Berry]

Looks sharp on mine also. I would like to see a significantly larger version, though, to more appreciate the color depth, gradations and intricacies of the image, which I like very much. Too many of the LuLa home page images are just too small for me to really appreciate with these old eyes, which will turn three score and fourteen in a couple of days.

Pete

[Pelao]

Are you kidding me?  It's tack sharp.  I have a 40x40 inch print of it and you can cut your teeth on it.

Kevin

I'd love to see that. The print I mean, not the teeth cutting...

Strikes me that like most interesting photographs the monitor doesn't really do it full justice. The textures on the print must be delicious.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

If you have zoomed in your browser (what I often do with Firefox) images become softer.
Hit Ctrl-0 and they all become sharp again.
If that doesn't work a visit at your favourite optician might help.
Cheers
~Chris

[dennbel]

I certainly don't need my eyes checked. I see very sharp images of Macro shots on 1x.com. Perhaps because this image is only 625x510 pixels as posted here might be the reason? Not trying to be argumentative, just commenting and questioning what I saw.   I was running the browser at 125% and it does look sharper at 100% as Christoph mentioned.

[mcbroomf]

Nice and sharp on my screen as well as a beautiful photo.  Very much the kind I take when wandering around old/abandoned areas.

Kevin, why F16 though?  It doesn't look as though you had to worry about DOF.

[Hans Kruse]

I certainly don't need my eyes checked. I see very sharp images of Macro shots on 1x.com. Perhaps because this image is only 625x510 pixels as posted here might be the reason? Not trying to be argumentative, just commenting and questioning what I saw.   I was running the browser at 125% and it does look sharper at 100% as Christoph mentioned.

I'm sure it is tack sharp as a print and maybe the downsized picture wasn't output sharpened after downsizing before uploading to LuLa. I downloaded it ran it through the Lightroom output sharpening for screen as standard and it was visibly better.

[ndevlin]

I can say from experience that the Lula picture uploader butchers images.  Even on my last article I spend a ton of time re-uploading one photo which was tack sharp but which always looked like mush on the site.  If you think it's irritating for you, imagine how we feel when it's our art!!

- N.

[mguertin]

I can say from experience that the Lula picture uploader butchers images.  Even on my last article I spend a ton of time re-uploading one photo which was tack sharp but which always looked like mush on the site.  If you think it's irritating for you, imagine how we feel when it's our art!!

- N.

This is really odd, the image uploader on the backend doesn't do anything at all to the images (it doesn't alter them at all), I sent you a PM with with more details.  If you have any sample images I can check out please let me know, I can give you my email via PM.  They shouldn't be manipulated at all during the upload, I know how important this is!

Mark

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

You could do an MD5 digest or CRC test with the file uploaded and re-downloaded to check against the original.
My impression is, people tend to overlook zooming in with their browsers which of course blurs images.

[mguertin]

I worked with Nick on testing this and we couldn't recreate any issues with the uploader editing the file (it's literally just a web front-end that's an uploader that's not even capable of resizing, etc).  We even specifically tested an image he had issues with in the past and it was very sharp on our test, no changes to it at all, so not sure what the deal was there but it wasn't the uploader as far as we can tell

[michael]

How the file is prepped is the most important thing. Here's what I do...

Sharpen the image properly in Lightroom to begin with.

Then, in Lightroom, choose output size, select sRGB, and most importantly "Sharpen for Screen".

Next, in Photoshop choose Save for Web, jpeg "Hi" Optimized.

This is what I've been doing for years, and seems to produce the sharpest looking web files.

Michael

[Pete Berry]

I'm sure I'm not alone in being unsatisfied with the small, postcard size of the always interesting, and frequently stunning images gracing the home page. I know that website real estate is valuable, that perhaps copyright issues are a concern, but to have the image open significantly larger in a separate window as in the past, or a link to a larger image as Kevin has given before, would be truly wonderful.

Thanks to you all for maintaining this "best of the best" resource.

Pete

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

My impression is, people tend to overlook zooming in with their browsers which of course blurs images.

I agree with Chris, default zoom is the most likely culprit. However, if one knows that display zoom can be an issue (only gets worse with high PPI displays), maybe one should attempt to compensate for it a bit by boosting the lower spatial frequencies a bit more than they are currently.

I'm pretty sure that the built-in for display sharpening in Lightroom is designed for 100% display zoom (even the 'high' setting looks blurry at 125%), but it would only require a modest amount of out-of the-box thinking to address that omission by offering an additional different option which boosts the spatial frequencies at e.g. 0.74 pixel diameter.

Cheers,
Bart

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I never output sharpen for web display.
In LR just a simple output from the master file without screen sharpening and in Photoshop I even use "bicubic" standard instead of "bicubic sharper".
Why?
All these output sharpeners give me ugly oversharpened images.

Sharpness is for rookies.
Real men blur !

Cheers
~Chris

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I never output sharpen for web display.

Oh my, lots to be gained there Chris.

In LR just a simple output from the master file without screen sharpening and in Photoshop I even use "bicubic" standard instead of "bicubic sharper".

BiCubic Sharper is aweful, IMHO to be avoided for serious work.

Why?
All these output sharpeners give me ugly oversharpened images.

Only if the wrong parameters are used.

Cheers,
Bart

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Only if the wrong parameters are used.

Enlighten me - how do you output sharpen for screen in LR then?
Cheers
~Chris