Pink Forest
by admart01

Comment:
Nice floral image. Good shallow depth of field (DOF) with low noise. Greens and pinks work well together. High technical quality.

Some viewers may not like having a floral entry for this type of challenge. Flowers are common in almost all challenges and viewers tend to rate them lower if they feel they do not fit well.

Though there really isn't anything specifically wrong with the composition there is not a lot in the framing to add interest for the viewer. You might consider other perspectives and/or arrangements of the flowers for added visual impact. The rule of thirds, of course, is always good for this purpose.

You might consider judicious use of dodge and burn to add texture to image and reduce the slight overexposure in some of the flower petals.

A Portal from their World into Ours.
by bandit

Comment:
Nice concept, good colors and an appealing composition. The hand is a great idea. General photographic quality is high. Works very well for this challenge. It should finish high in scoring.

Tentaclus - a Nebulan jellyfish
by naomik

Comment:
Colorful abstract with a good solid black background.

Pure abstracts that do not have an immediately discernable tie with reality like this one typically do not do well in DPC voting. There are exceptions but they must be technically perfect. Viewers likely will think this is a spur of the moment idea that was not particularly well thought out.

This image has two bright washed out areas at the center of the composition. They are major viewer distractions that will hurt it in scoring. It also has some image noise. Exessive noise reduction software smoothing would probably work well with this particualar image.

Nithhogr - protector of Yggdrasil! (aka "Norbert")
by muggle_girl

Comment:
Color and general image technical quality is good. The setting is nice and hiding your main subject behind out of focus leaves works for this composition.

Toys have been overused in DPC entries in the past and generally do not do well in challenges. Viewers have become jaded to them. This will hurt the score of this image more so than any technical flaw.

Through Saturn's Rings
by banmorn

Comment:
Composition and color generally good. Concept is fine.

The general poor photographic quality of this image will hurt it in scoring. It has a lot of granulated detail that will be interpreted as an image defect by most viewers.

You might consider a couple things for improvement. First apply an excess amount of noise reduction to remove the granulation and smooth the borders in the trasition areas. It would add to the ring illusion you are trying to achieve. Then pick a couple colors and increase their saturation a lot to draw attention to them and add more visual interest to the composition. Color painting in a 50% greyscale layer is probably the best way to do that but simple saturation increases for the selected colors would probably work well too.

eyes of fire
by focus57

Comment:
Unique concept challenging the viewer to carefully consider exactly what the fantasy is. Generally the colors are good and the firey eyes are the strength of the composition. This image has no hot spots that hurt the composition.

Meets the challenge but some voters probably will not think it all that exciting. Who cares about them, anyway? :)

A few technical things...
The mask is slightly off center and tilted downward on the right side. The human eye wants subconciously to correct for those things and even if the viewer does not conciously recognize it they will be bothered. It is more pleasing to the viewer if the mask is absolutely centered and the frame rotated slightly counterclockwise for leveling.

The chin is right at the bottom on the frame. You might consider raising it in the frame so the chin is not so close to the edge. You might consider recomposing for the rule of thirds for added visual interest.

The color of the eyes unnaturally bleeds over onto the rest of the mask. This may be purposeful for effect but most viewers will probably interpret this as an image defect. You can easily clone around the edge of the eyes to remove edge effect and that might even make the eyes seem more intense after the edge distraction is removed.

The biggest issue is with contrast. If you apply a simple autocontrast adjustment you will see a vast improvement that adds considerable "pop" to the composition. It could, however, result in lost detail so you may want to experiment with various techniques to improve the contrast without significant loss of detail.

Bot
by caba

Comment:
Interesting surrealistic image. Reasonable high technical quality. Colors and framing done well.

Image meets the challenge well and engages the viewer to think about what it might be. It has the general shape of the alien spacecraft in the old movie version of War of the Worlds.

On the technical side the image has two noticable hot spots. One is on the left tip of the 'craft' and the other near the joint in the left 'arm'. They are slight distractions in the composition.

It is slightly low in contrast. You can tell because a simple autocontrast increases the contrast. Increasing contrast will make the image pop more and have greater eye impact. This one, however, is very challenging. There is a lot of fine detail in the light shadow that you don't want to lose which easily gets lost in a levels, curves, selective color or even just a strait black point adjustment. That further blows out the two hot spots. You might try an increase of about +4-5% in black with a selective color adjustment. This will effectively increase contrast without making the hot spots bigger. Then apply dodge and burn to bring out shadow detail in the interesting areas and tone down the two hot spots.

All in all this is one of the top images in the challenge and should place very high, perhaps in the ribbons.

In The Land of the Fairies
by shutterphunk

Comment:
You have successfully created a fantasy world with color and soft image processing. Green and yellow together are very appealing to the eye. This is a tranquil image that will have strong appeal to some viewers.

Some viewers may wonder what the objects at the top right side of the frame are and may even think they are distractions.

The Ninth Planet
by Cutter

Comment:
A good try at a fantasy world. The people add perspective to the grandeur of the scene.

Most of the lower frame and snow is overexposed. This will be a distraction for most viewers. The rocks have a granular appearance that will be interpreted as a poorer quality image. It is very difficult to get fine detail like that to be focused properly.

?
by kcuman

Comment:
A fascinating and good composition. Nice the way you have the bottom stem go to the lower right corner. B&W is a great choice for this picture. General image quality is good but not great. It has a few digital 'jaggies' along some edges.