Image post processing critique

[mikemill]

So ignoring the blurry right side caused by noobness fogging the camera Which image do you think looks better?

Unaltered photo (Except resized down to 800x600)

Auto white balance by UFRaw

Manual white balance

Which one do you think looks the best and does anyone have suggestions of how to improve the post processing part?

 

[JustinW]

I don't know much about the technical editing stuff, but bluriness on the right side aside I like the picture.

 

[zen_man]

The bottom one. What did you set the WB to with that one? Some of it can be just a matter of preference, but I tend to like my white balance on the warm side. Not too much, just enough to give it that little punch. The contrast and saturation looks a little better to me as well. did you darken it a little?

 

[mikemill]

I messed with a lot of the settings. I left the exposure compensation at 1.0, upped the temperature and brought down the green. I took the base curve from a straight line and lowered the midpoint area slightly. I upped the gamma (which darkened it) and played a bit with the linearity. I also played with the saturation curve a little bit also. Right now I don't fully understand how each piece works so it was a lot of going back and forth and tweaking each setting to see how it changed to the picture.

Need to find out if there is a way to save the UFRaw settings on a per file basis.

For me I like how the bumps on the arms are more pronounced in the manual one.

 

[kwest]

I like the bottom one also.

 

[Jorgy]

Bottom one for me.........I don't like the green water look, I try for blue or black....

M

 

[dannobee]

Download Picasa3, then upload the pics. Process with the "I'm feeling lucky" button in basic fixes, then click "effects" tab and choose "sharpen."

You can also fix shades and colors in the "tuning" tab.


.

 

[mikemill]

Hmmm Picasa3 does do a pretty decent job

 

[sarita75]

I like #3 but I don't care for the one in your last posting at all.

 

[zen_man]

I like #3 but I don't care for the one in your last posting at all.

Agreed, it looks like it lowered the shadowing or black point too much. The shadowing and darkness in the third pic give more depth to objects. But again, a lot of times, it's preference.