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10/10/2009 11:23:04 PM · #1 |
I took some pictures of snapdragons with snow today. It seemed fitting as the end of summer/fall and the beginning of winter (yeah, I know it's a little early). I know I can crop this, but where? What improvements would you make, either in taking the picture, or processing it? The brick background keeps pulling my eye from the flowers.
I also have this one, which I cropped before I uploaded. What do you think?
I'm frustrated with GIMP, and I have a copy of photoshop on it's way, whenever it comes off from being 'back-ordered'. Thank you in advance for looking at these. Hopefully that will be a little more 'user friendly' for me.
Message edited by author 2009-10-10 23:24:33. |
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10/11/2009 12:17:40 AM · #2 |
I gave a try on the pink ones, using layers and a couple of plugins to make the flowers stand out from the similarly colored background. Editing steps are with the image.
BTW, your garden appears to have an infestation of lizards. I don't think they are harmful outside of Japan, though. |
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10/11/2009 01:13:42 AM · #3 |
I went in somewhat the same direction as Yo_Spiff, so clearly you have a consensus on what generally needs to be added to the image to make it better.
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10/11/2009 07:22:18 AM · #4 |
I gave it a go. Replaced the color in the bricks and enhanced the colors added a little vignetting and sharpened it a bit. Probably a bit overdone. Sort of a rush job because i didn't have to add any reptiles. :)
ETA: I had a few extra minutes to burn so I thought I would give your photo a little more work. I cleaned it up a little bit and toned down on the processing a tad.
Message edited by author 2009-10-11 09:32:18. |
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10/11/2009 02:28:28 PM · #5 |
Just thought I throw in my slant on it
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10/11/2009 09:00:34 PM · #6 |
Never mind the original message about what you should do, here's my version after I did all that:
Still needs a bit of work, especially with some red fringes around the edges, which I'm willing to do ...tomorrow. PM me for a .PSD or editing steps or if you want me to process a higher-res version (again, tomorrow).
Message edited by author 2009-10-11 21:33:11. |
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10/11/2009 10:13:14 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by ahjenny:
I took some pictures of snapdragons with snow today. It seemed fitting as the end of summer/fall and the beginning of winter (yeah, I know it's a little early). I know I can crop this, but where? What improvements would you make, either in taking the picture, or processing it? |
I would re-shoot rather than try to force it with a lot of complicated editing. It's a lot easier and more rewarding when you have a good photo to start with. Save your editing skills for turning good photos into great ones.
Originally posted by ahjenny:
The brick background keeps pulling my eye from the flowers. |
Yup. Simplify the background and the viewer's eye will naturally be drawn to your subject. It doesn't have to be an empty dull background, just one with fewer distracting elements. If color is important to your subject, such as with your flower, then you may want to have a specific color or colors in your background too. For example, you might want contrasting colors in the background to make your subject stand out. Sometimes a very dark background works well with bright subjects such as flowers. Blurring the background with a shallow DOF is another way to simplify a background.
Here's an example of simplifying a background (perhaps not the finest example available, but it should suffice to illustrate my point). It's a photo I made recently of a big colorful spider that was in our backyard. There were a lot of distracting elements in the background, grass, bushes, sidewalk, the house, etc., so I had my wife hold up a piece of red foamcore a short distance behind the web. The other colors you see in the background were accidental. They were caused by my wife not holding the foamcore high enough to cover all of the background, so part of the house and part of her blouse showed up in the photo. Even so, I think it worked out okay. The distance from the subject and the largish aperture that I used blurred it nicely, so it just adds to the bokeh.
Another thing that works well with flowers is to get in real close. Even to the point of having only a small part of the flower filling the frame. You'll see people doing that a lot here on DPC. In fact, it's a good idea to go have a look at other flower photos in the galleries. Don't try to mimic someone else's photo. Rather, use them as a springboard for your own ideas and images.
Originally posted by ahjenny:
I'm frustrated with GIMP, and I have a copy of photoshop on it's way, whenever it comes off from being 'back-ordered'. Thank you in advance for looking at these. Hopefully that will be a little more 'user friendly' for me. |
Photoshop takes a while to learn, but I think you'll be glad you switched.
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10/12/2009 12:26:26 AM · #8 |
| As Mick said, Photoshop has a bit of a learning curve. Nothing really difficult about it, Just alot of different tools and options to play with, Takes awhile to understand what they do and can be used for. Advice is to check your local library and see if they have any books for the version of photoshop you are getting. For example, "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Classroom in a Book" is a great book for learning the basics as well as some advanced techniques in CS4, They have dozens of books out for each version of PS. I have the CS4 Classroom in a Book and although I have been using Photoshop Since Photoshop 4 was released, It still taught me a few tricks I hadn't known about. |
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