Semi macro shot for critique

All comments welcomed. I have a couple more from the same session in the garden that I'll post at some point if folks don't mind.

Nice, what lens did you use?

Ver nice indeed. One small black speck catches the eye and could usefully be cloned out. Gorgeous detail and colour plus excellent composition.

I presume the other thread was an error and I'll delete it now.

Didn't quite do the edit properly - it's -just- still visible. I have a better res version that I'll do properly.
Thanks for that.

I'll dig out the EXIF details in a bit for McBrian... thanks for the comments.

Very nice indeed, Chris.

G

It's the K10D, the Pentax SMC 28-200 FA, @ 200 mm, F5.6 and 1/180, ISO 400. Hand held, SR on, no flash. A bit of cropping, a touch of levels in the green channel, and a bit of USM.

Nice shot, lovely colours and good composition. With a tripod and aperture a bit more closed it would have been even closer to perfection.

By all means do show the other ones...

Prieni

nice shot, I would argue a little heavy on the USM in places, there are black halos around some of the leafs.

I would probably have applied the USM to a duplicate layer, that way you can use a mask and/or the layer opacity to vary the effect until it looks just right.

Totally agree - thank you.

I ran out of patience when I resized it down to something sensible for getting on to 1280x1024 without having to scroll. I thought it looked a bit over-sharpened too. The higher res version is a bit more subtle, but I haven't worked out how to keep that subtlety when resizing for the web yet.

I get it more or less Ok, then I remember that it needs to be resized for the screen, and the USM turns out to be as subtle as a chainsaw on a balsa wood model.

Any hints, anyone, for the right USM settngs to use for an image that's to be resized to, say, about 1/3 of the linear dimensions of the original?

(relative to what's "right" for the original, I mean...)

For an EPZ image - 1000 pixels wide that is, I suggest 50-75%, Radius 0.9, Threshold 3.

For a 10.2 MP image, 100%, Radius 2, Threshold 3.

Works for me.

On the USM, I usually use a radius of 0.5 for the original size, radius 0.4 for the smaller ones. Threshold usually 2 or 3, around 100 %.
If you have a lot of detail in a pic I copy the background, apply the USM to that layer and copy this layer anew. One of the layers I set to layer mode "lighten", the other one to "darken". The opacitiy of the "lighten" most often needs some scaling back.

As you see, there are many different methods that people use and that give similar results.

BTW, I remember that Matt created some Photoshop actions for sharpening. I sometimes resort to these for difficult pictures.

Prieni

Less good, perhaps.

Anyway, it's the 28-200 @ 200mm; 1/500 at F9.5. Annoyingly, I had the camera at ISO 800, but there it is.

very nice! but agree it looks over sharpened (the first one anyway)

I had always presumed that you really had to resize before sharpening and sharpen each resolution separately..

although usually I find that if the sharpening is right at hi res is is not enough at low res, which seems to be the opposite of what you are saying...