 Posted 5/12/2008 6:40:14 AM
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Posted 5/12/2008 8:24:37 AM
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Any chance you could put up the original shot?
The question in my mind is of artistic interpretation and thank goodness we have that option but in this case it is taken a step too far IMO.
I can address the reproduction aspects and you can interpret how those deviations add or detract from the image. I'll try to give my impression as to how it affects the image for the positive or negative as well.
The range from the shadows through midtones are compressed, resulting in a significant loss of detail in the shadow and 3/4 tone areas, most notably the treeline. It's one of the 2 things that most bother me about the image. While you might have done this to separate the barn from the treeline it affects the red roof, the rail at the top of the door and to a lesser degree the shadow area at the opening at the bottom left part of the building that contains reds and yellows, and the separation of the foreground tree from the treeline behind. To me these parts of the image are important since they are contrasting colors from the rest of the image. The reason I asked if you could post the original shot is because, from my eye's stand point the shadow endpoint is set too high rather than an errant curve adjustment.
The other thing that stands out, and perhaps is an artistic element, is the enhanced color saturation. While often a bump in saturation can, like applying sharpening, make an image pop, go one step too far and it degrades the image. In the newspaper business we called this comic color and in the early days of USA Today they often erred in that direction. IMO this image takes the saturation enhancement too far because it degrades elements that would improve the image, notably the Reds that I spoke of earlier.
Lastly and somewhat minor in this case is the color balance. There is a slight shift toward green that contaminates the blue sky. Anytime you pump up saturation any balance issues become more noticeable. Thankfully in this image there are areas to check color balance in Highlights, Midtones and Shadows. By using the info box in your editing program you can double check your visual impression. For the highlights you can measure the clouds, for the midtones and shadows the the barn yields many places to check. Theoretically a perfect measurement for a specular highlight would be 255 in all colors (8 bit), A true white would be 254 and balanced in all colors. Since it's hard to find the best place to read them you just have to take an average of similar readings. I tend toward carrying more blue than green, more blue than red, and more red than green, in the highlights because it yields a slightly more natural white. The same holds true for shadow readings but the midtones should be as balanced as possible.Your preference may be different.
From an artistic stand point I'd like to see the shadow to midtone range opened, the green saturation reduced and the red/yellow saturation adjusted to balance with the new green saturation.
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Posted 5/12/2008 12:09:59 PM
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