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02/06/2006 10:38:43 PM · #1 |
I entered my "Country Life" photo, but when previewing, the image looked awful! I saved at the highest quality I could and stay within the 150k limit. Even so, my sky (which is pretty much a solid color) has that jagged looking color variation and also in a few places along the foreground.
I really like the shot, but I'm not going to submit it looking like that. Funny thing is that the areas in question had little or no editing. I've never had this extreme of a problem when preparing an entry. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Judy |
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02/06/2006 10:41:09 PM · #2 |
| If you are not going to enter, post the photo and maybe some folks can give you some ideas what happened. |
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02/06/2006 10:41:51 PM · #3 |
Try noise reduction--that should make the compression work better for you.
Since it's an advanced editing challenge, you could also try something like Buzz Simplifier, which removes small details. You can use a layer to control where it is affecting the image. (There's a free trial of this filter, gives you 20 uses. Actually, they have about four different packages including various combinations of filters, and so you can actually have about 4 times that many uses if you try them all.)
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02/06/2006 10:46:19 PM · #4 |
| Try sizing down slightly more... Maybe use 620 as the longest side or even 600. Try saving the file at a slightly smaller size like 145k or 140k. Try a combination of these tricks. Sometimes works... |
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02/06/2006 11:25:20 PM · #5 |
Sounds like this is possibly caused by extream color processing with out-of-gamut colors. Multiple saves as a .jpg file would have .jpg artifacting which is different than what you describe.
I believe this effect is caused by subtle color changes that cannot be handled with 8-bit color. Instead of smooth color transitions there are discontinuous jumps from one shade to the next. It will appear like pixelated boxes and is most apparent in skies. It really is a form of banding. Your histogram display will have a lot of holes in it too.
You will have to reprocess the image but I have two suggestions that might help:
1-If your photo image editor is capable of converting to 16-bit color than do that before image processing. You still have to convert back to 8-bit to save in .jpg for submission to DPC but it will look more natural.
2-If your editor is capable of displaying an out-of-gamut color warning display then turn it on. I suspect you will see out-of-gamut colors in the areas where the pixelation occurs. With the display still turned on you can create an adjusment layer for Color Balance and make subtle changes to that in order to reduce or eliminate the out-of-gamut colors. This will reduce or eliminate the pixelation.
I've experienced this before and these two used separately or together have helped considerably.
Message edited by author 2006-02-06 23:30:33.
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02/07/2006 12:09:34 AM · #6 |
Are you looking at the image at 100% view? I've seen odd effects when viewing at other than 100%.
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02/07/2006 12:33:53 AM · #7 |
Originally posted by Prof_Fate:
Are you looking at the image at 100% view? I've seen odd effects when viewing at other than 100%. |
In addition to this, make sure that your monitor settings haven't been changed to "Thousands of Colors" or less. |
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