Congratulations to Rick, whose "Christmas Cactus" image won the vote for People's Choice and was awarded Editor's Choice for Artistic and Technical Merit.
Christmas Cactus
Rick's original image was uncropped; however I thought the image had so much potential that I suggested Rick crop the image to eliminate some of the distracting background. I REALLY like the resulting image. I did notice however that the image was posted in Adobe RGB color space. I downloaded the image and converted it to sRGB to illustrate why you should use sRGB when posting images to the web. Here's the sRGB version:
Note the more pleasing colors in the sRGB version. (The difference will be more apparent if you are using a calibrated CRT.) sRGB dispays better on the web because the sRGB color space was specifically designed to approximate the color display characteristics of an "off-the-shelf" monitor. When you are processing an image that will be posted on the web and viewed with a browser that isn't color managed (such as Internet Explorer), you should convert the image to sRGB. The display won't be completely accurate, but it will be a better representation than if the image was posted in Adobe RGB.
I liked the image so much that I asked Rick for the raw file to play with. The somewhat "harsh" highlights on the brightest petals made me suspect that the red channel was clipped. After playing with the file in Capture NX to reduce the clipping, and correct the white balance, here's what I came up with:
This image might look a bit "over the top" when viewed in a browser that isn't "color managed"; however it looks beautiful in a color managed application like Photoshop. Note that I slightly lightened the stamen of the flower. Flower stamen are like eyes in a portrait of a person (or animal), if the eyes aren't sharp or are too dark, the picture has no "life." The same is true for a picture of a flower where the stamen is too dark or out of focus. It's a subtle change, but I think it makes a significant difference in the overall success of the image. I would love to see Rick print and frame this image.
Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Backlit" assignment.
