Plymouth Sound

[Julian de'Courcy]

Plymouth Sound and Drakes Island. I arrived at Plymouth Sound and with the amount of mist and the imminent sun rise I was wishing I had thrown the 5D in the car boot. Not to be, I did what I could which was very rushed and did not expose that well. Actually to tired at the time to care. Just wish I had taken a wee bit more care.

P9080015 by JuliandeCourcy, on Flickr

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P9080025 by JuliandeCourcy, on Flickr



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P9080078 by JuliandeCourcy, on Flickr

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P9080053 by JuliandeCourcy, on Flickr

 

[Beth Carter]

great color on the first, love the magenta purple hues in sunrise. great series overall. last one is a tad over-sharpened, it's left a white line over the trees, but that's easily fixed.

 

[Brian Moore]

Quite amazing colors in those, Julian and that first one is amazing the way the mist has obscured only part of the island. Very nice set.

 

[Ralph Thornton]

My favorite is the first! It looks like the island is floating above the clouds.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

1 and 2 for me are stunning examples, just excellent light and wonderful subjects.

Not sure that the 5D would have added anything other than weight!

Well worth getting about early for I'd say - loving the fog

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

ye the first two are from the east side of the sound and the island is the west entrance which follows up the tamer which divides Cornwall and Devon.
Beth interesting what you say, I switch of all noise reduction and sharpening in camera for Raw files. What is interesting is that I did local adjustment on the island with levels, I then rely upon downsizing to a 2000 or 1200 pixel wide image which is all I do to reduce the noise. I very rarely using Unsharp mask or Smart sharpen any picture if ever , but I do downsize as above using Bicubic sharpen. My monitor is a cheapo of the shelf one.. I must be more aware that perhaps the downsizing the way I do it is not the best way, so thanks. I do sometimes look online at my flickr, if in a apple store and the images look far better than I see them at home, or in some cases worse. I do promise myself a new decent monitor so if anyone does have any good recommendations.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

I've been battling with photoshop over-sharpening my downsized JPEGs

Finally figured it out this week

Now when I reduce the size I resample the image using Bicubic (Not Bicubic Automatic which I had been using) and this avoids the over-sharpening I'd been seeing.

I think by default PS assumes that when you downsize you need to sharpen, so was using Bicubic Sharper.

Bicubic by itself says it gives better gradients and should be used when you see over sharpening - so I guess I should have RTFM!

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

Chris I will give that a try, I simply excepted what the tab says which is ''Bicubic Sharper(best for reduction)' I have been looking into sharpening over the last couple of days. The reason being, results I'd always had in the past I had not found very pleasing. I have read and found out which most people probably already knew, is that the elements of the photograph dictate how to sharpen. The amount slider, set at low and radius high with none or very little detail suits some images and I notice the sliders in the opposite settings suite other pics depending on how big/how much, are the types of detail. Practicing with the LR4 sharpener and CS4 smart sharpen at 100% has shown me what can be achieved if you spend a bit of time and experiment does increase the clarity, without giving that hedgehog prickle sharpness, which looks odd to me.
I will definitely set the reducing image size as you mention to Bicubic- the one for smoother graduations.

 

[Lesley Jones]

I can't see to sharpen properly, but I've used just Bicubic when resizing for the web for ages. FocalBlade is very good if you can't get your head around all the sliders (which I can't), but lately I have started using Topaz Infocus for the final sharpen and I love what it does. Some images will take a little micro contrast as well - you get a feel for what works pretty quickly.

I love the first two in this set Julian. Beth spotted the sharpening problem while I only saw a little grittiness. It's easily fixed though

 

[Beth Carter]

I downsize without sharpening, and use a very small amount of smart sharpen on my web images.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Beautiful shots, Julian. Love the colours!

 

[Pete Askew]

Tired or not, a wonderful set Julian.

I tend to output to JPEG from LR and have sharpen off (I think that might be the default). For sharpening I use Nik Output Sharpener.