New type of snow flower

This was taken at lunch time today (6/1/2010) during the snow storm, The specs are snow, not dirt on the sensor.

[IMG]http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad254/weldingblues/06-01-2010.jpg[/IMG]

This has been cropped, and auto colour adjustment only.

C & C as normal please

It's well-taken, and the snow especially is very well exposed, but the subject just doesn't hold my interest enough unfortunately!

Colin,

I thought that C&C might be facilitated if I had a dabble with your image - I hope you don't mind! Not sure what software you use for your images - what I have done is with Lightroom 3 beta.

My aim was to give the image a bit of a lift, and a bit more life / zing etc.

Essentially, white balance and tint were increased to the 'light' (right hand) sides.

The black point was upped to 7; the contrast, clarity and vibrance were all increased. Exposure was opened up by a quarter of a stop. I changed the 'curve' from linear to medium contrast also.

I increased the saturation of greens, blues and reds a little, and lastly sharpened only the main details a little (I masked everything else).

While this might sound a bit complicated, it's all achieved with a few sliders and buttons - if you don't like an effect, slide the control back the other way! You can't hurt the image. It's all up to you and your Mk I eyeball - if you like the look of it, then keep it. It's largely personal taste.

Anyway, here's my take on it - your mileage may of course vary (and well done if it does).

I have had to do this via a link to the image in my Pbase gallery, as I still cannot get images to link and embed here...

link

i-berg: you need to change security settings on your picture.

Tony,

Thanks for the tip - and gladly, if I knew where & what they were (I have not added anything by way of security to my account, images or galleries). Interesting thing is that one of my images here stayed put, and continues to do so, yet its stablemates (even those from the same gallery) won't play.

Have you got any handy hints / experience with Pbase per chance please?

Colin - apologies for diverting your thread for entirely selfish motives

i-berg,
I cannot use the link it comes up with this message;

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /o6/78/932378/1/120874275.E3a1r0mJ.06012010.jpg on this server.

I look forward to seeing the picture at some stage.

Regards

Colin,

This access issue is part of a series - I have asked for assistance from the site admin team in the open chat forum.

In the meantime, if you wish, you should be able to navigate to your pic manually like this:

Using your browser, go to www.pbase.com/iberg

Click on the thumbnail image for the gallery called 'Outdoors'.

Yours is the last image there - and it has your name on it of course.

i-berg,
I see what you have done, I use PSE 6 for photo editing so will have a play.

The learning continues.

Regards

Colin,

I also have PSE 6, and it gets less work than LR3.

The latter is available free as a beta release (a Google search will get you to the download), but expires in a month or three. If you shoot RAW (highly recommended), then it is not a bad way to go, although you may already be using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which is sort of similar to Lightroom, as the front end of PSE6 if you shoot in RAW yourself.

PS - I don't have shares in Adobe, and I don't work for them or any other software or imaging co., so this is not a promotion - just my personal preference for post-processing my own images.