Looking for technical suggestions...

[boku]

Lisa,

I am just wondering, have you changed something lately? These seem a bit different from your previous work. There is a certain richness that is missing. Did you forget to convert these to SRGB?

Cheers,
Bob

[Lisa Nikodym]

Of course you need to shoot the card in the same light as the pictures.

Thanks for the suggestion.  However, how well does this work for landscape shots, when the light often varies substantially over the frame?  (For example, when some of the frame is in sun but a some of it is shaded by trees, mountains, etc.)  That's the only thing that has kept me from trying the gray card technique.  Is my concern at all significant, or should I try it anyway?

What I have found to be most effective is the Colorwasher plug in from the Plug In Site

Thanks, Bob.  I'll give it a try and see how it works for me.

Lisa

[howard smith]

I submit that the factors that you are specifically asking for are also subject to variations in taste.  How much is enough or too much sharpening?  Better lens?  Now that is a can of worms, subject to all sorts of tatses or quirks or whatever.  Like a better camera.  The colors are too drab or saturated?  DoF I won't even mention.

As for pom's comment, the color can look wierd even if it is exactly reality.  To make the image look real, maybe the sky needs to be a bit less than real.

I think it is difficult to seperate the technical from technique from artist license.  Color is an element of composition, for example.

[Sheldon N]

My overall thoughts regarding technical improvement...

1) My tastes lean towards a slightly more sharpened final output. Have you run a little unsharp mask on these after resizing them for the web?

2) A lot of the photos have very blocked up shadows (due to high contrast subject matter). I might try using layers and multiple raw conversions of the same file to squeeze out more dynamic range from certain photos.

3) The sunlight sections in the some of the late evening shots runs a little overwarm/oversaturated for my tastes (looks a little orangish). That's more of a personal preference/color balance issue than a specific suggestion though.

4) Some of the grander scenic vista shots do have a case of the "drabs". I find that this type of shot is a lot more tolerant of aggressive saturation/contrast changes. Maybe add a little unsharp mask as Local Contast Enhancement, and push the saturation in just certain channels based on the look you're going for. I tend to do a lot of adding saturation in just the red and yellow channels (for more "earthy" subject matter) as a way of giving the image a Velvia sort of pop.

Hope this helps!

Sheldon

[cgordon]

i like to keep in mind that colours are still subjective. "real" and "not real", or "right" and "not right" are illusions of the mind. make it look how you want it to look, unless you're aiming for journalism rather than art. we're not stuck with using certain films anymore, we can make an image look however we want! many people loved/love velvia, but there's nothing "real" about velvia's colours. but i do find having accurate colours to start with makes working with images much easier, ie. profiling your camera.

[Lisa Nikodym]

If you're shooting RAW, I highly recommend you get a 24-patch Color Checker chart and calibrate ACR as described here. I think it will do a lot to improve the colors in your images. The colors in many of your images give me a sense of being almost, but not quite right. The suggestions already given for increasing contrast and saturation are good, but I believe that getting the RAW converter to output the right colors instead of the almost-right colors will improve things to a similar degree.

Thanks for an excellent suggestion, Jonathan.  I gave it a try, and now, when I bring RAW images into ACR, they look *considerably* less washed-out than before.  I was surprised by what a difference it makes.  Thanks much for posting the instructions on your web site!

Lisa

[Lisa Nikodym]

ddolde:  Thanks for the invitation.  It looks like a decent site, but right now I really only have time to fully participate in one online forum, and I've gotten rather attached to this one.     I'm usually not particularly interested in critique; just this once I wanted feedback on how I'm handling the transition to digital.

Lisa