Well I was out all day and it's taken a while to absorb all this, but I do understand all the frustration that has been aired. The PU Team probably feels under siege by now.

Pete has asked us to summarise what we would like from the forum, so hopefully given a little time it can be worked out.

I keep on plugging away for phpBB3, being quite a fan of the format, but notwithstanding that my wish would be for a wider forum that showed 800 pixel wide images and a mopping up of the minor glitches when viewing for new posts and the other oddments of course that have been highlighted by others. At the moment spotting the new posts is rather more difficult than it was.

I like the composition of the image and the message it gives. There is one detail that could be considered - the no entry sign could be seen as blocking the path of the couple, which contadicts the main thrust of the theme. Perhaps it would improve things if it were cloned out?

I've started a competition called "JR's Competition" in the new competition area - if a couple of you would be kind enough to enter any images I'd just like to see how it works.

In the meantime the current competition continues, with the method of posting the same as before. As the forum resizes now it's not so critical what the image size is, but I've been using 1000 pixels wide just like EPZ. Convenient and fast, but it's up to you!

The competition will hopefully appear soon.

A terrific location for an ADAPS club shoot tonight.

Here's a sample picture of Charlene and Jade:


Pentax K10D, SMC Pentax-DA 50-200mm

We tried this in a previous edition of PU Magazine - I had a half page advert for a full day Seminar including PS, techniques and a model shoot. Not one reply. I know another contributer who tried the same and he was a Big Name in the photo press. He got no response either. If Matt can get a response, then it was and still is a great idea.

ChrisA is quite right about different skill levels though and it's very difficult to offer one programme for all levels.

Anyway, hope it works and helps some of us to hone their skills.

It's a sharp lens that only suffers from rather poor distortion control, particularly at the wide end. Not the best choice for architecture, but a good general purpose optic.

Although the Sigma lens is faster and even if it is a newer design that doesn't mean it will be better quality. The 16-45mm is also a modern design, certainly not long in the tooth by any stretch of the imagination.

Generally I think that Pentax lenses are made to higher standards than independent ones, so my choice would be clear. Especially as the Pentax is currently available for a very modest £199 from SRS.

The sky was fairly bland and the lighting was normal overcast daylight.

I selected the sky with the Magic Wand, expanding the selection slightly so that there was no boundary line. The sky was then deleted.

A second layer was created and placed underneath. This layer was filled with black.

A third layer was placed under the other two and filled with white.

I used a small brush size and the eraser tool to selectively put holes in the black layer. On a large version of the image this simulates star patterns, but they are too small to show here.

Finally, excessive use of levels created the artificial colour of the building. The image is then flattened, sharpened and saved as an A3 TIFF ready for print. A smaller 1000 pixel JPEG is made if I want it for EPZ and this version is uploaded to Photobucket if I want to post it here. Resizing to 800 pixels can be done in Photobucket.

EDIT: The haloes round the chimneys don't show on the full size version, so that might be a result of the resizing.

The image has actually had very little done to it in the way of manipulation, less than a couple of minutes work in Photoshop 7. But it has been manipulated, that's for sure...

Here's a dramatic look at Haddon Hall: