Results and Feedback for "The Gift" Weekly Photography Assignment

[keithsnell]

Thank you to everyone who participated in "The Gift" assignment.  This assignment encouraged me to pause for a moment and reflect on the gifts I had been given.  I enjoyed seeing your images of gifts as well.  

Thank you to everyone that voted for my image of "Mom's Love" for People's Choice.

Mom's Love
People's Choice
Photographed by Keith

I enjoyed Dave Leiker's image of Elgie.  This was a wonderful environmental portrait, and the dramatic light in this image helped define the setting.  This composition made it easy to imagine the peacefulness of a late afternoon "cat nap"  after a visit from friends and family.  I thought Dave did a great job conveying the tone and mood of the setting.

Elgie
Photographed by Dave Leiker (prairiedust)

I also enjoyed Rick's image titled Bodie Finds Her Gift.  This was a well presented image.  I liked the border treatment, which gave the image the feel of a Christmas card, and had to chuckle when I saw the scene and read the "not a creature was stirring" text on the packages.

Bodie Finds Her Gift
Photographed by Rick Pepin

I also liked Sue's Amaryllis Red image.  The one thing that kept this from being a stunning image was that the stamen on the flower were a little soft.  Much like you should always try to keep the eyes sharp in a people or animal portrait, you should generally try to keep the stamen sharp on your portraits of flowers.  I did notice from the EXIF that this was a 5 second exposure, so potentially that had something to do with the soft stamen, or perhaps the relatively large aperture?  (Macro photography generally calls for an aperture of f8 or smaller, due to the extremely small depth of field at close focus distances.)  Nevertheless, I thought this image might benefit from "selective sharpening" on the stamen.  I've shown the result below.  I did notice while I had this image open in Photoshop that the color space was adobeRGB.  Since most images will display better in Internet Explorer if they are in sRGB format, I went ahead and changed the color space to sRGB.  This might account for any color or contrast differences you are seeing between the two versions.

Amaryllis Red
Photographed by Sue Pepin

Amaryllis Red
Photographed by Sue Pepin, selective sharpening by Keith

Since several people have asked for a lesson on "selective sharpening," I've included the steps below.

First I made a duplicate of the background layer by right-clicking on the background layer thumbnail in the layers pallete and selecting "duplicate layer" from the popup menu. 



Next, I applied smart sharpening to the layer copy by selecting Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen.



I used settings of 0.4 pixels and 100% and checked more accurate for my Smart Sharpen settings.



Since I wanted to selectively sharpen only the stamen, I applied a layer mask to the sharpened layer.  (Layer>Layer Mask>Hide All)



And then used an eraser tool with a soft brush just smaller than the width of the stamen to erase through the mask and reveal the sharpening on the stamen.



As a final touch, I thought the stamen had a bit too much of a red color cast, and so reduced the red on the stamen using the color balance adjustment under Image>Adjustments>Color Balance.



Here's the final result again, with selective sharpening and reduced red on the stamen of the flower and saved in sRGB color space.

Amaryllis Red
Photographed by Sue Pepin, selective sharpening by Keith

Thank you again to everyone that participated in this assignment.  

Viewers are encouraged to respond to this thread describing why you like a particular image, or think it was particularly successful at meeting the guidelines of the assignment.

Keith

[sue.pepin]

Keith, once again I agree with your comments.  I'll have to work on sharpening.  I have one request though.  I like to print out your comments along with the pictures.  If I use your print feature, it prints the text but not the pictures.  So, I end up copying everything and then pasting into word.  Is there another way this could print but with the photographs?

[keithsnell]

Hi Sue,

You are correct, unfortunately if you try to print the page using the website print function, the pictures don't print.   I'm afraid that the best way to print with the photographs is to copy and paste into Word like you have been doing.  Sorry about the hassle, I wish there was a better way...

Keith

[burzilai]

Congratulations!! I didn't get to vote for that weekly assignment coz ive been very busy, But I was going to vote for your photo also. It was a very very touching moment that you captured here Keith, no amount of money can top that "gift". I truly love this pic. so make that vote a total of 6, even though Im late.

[keithsnell]

Thank you.  This was a very fleeting moment, so I'm glad I was able to capture it on "film."  I think the kids will enjoy seeing it in the future and reminiscing.

Keith

[RebeccaSnell]

I wanted to make one comment on Keith's selective sharpening example.  When I do selective sharpening with a layer mask, I like to use the 'paintbrush' tool instead of erasing.  If you've done a 'hide all' mask and the mask is  black, you paint with white and it reveals what is on the masked layer and vise versa (white mask, you paint with black to hide what is on the masked layer).  The reason I do this is if you find you wanted to hide what you had revealed, you simply switch the color to black and paint over it again.  Of course, if you are using a hide all mask like Keith described above and are using the eraser and want to hide something you erased, you can paint black over that part too.  I just find using the paint brush quicker to make changes to how much I am revealing or hiding using a mask.   The other reason I use the paintbrush is I often use a 'reveal all' (white) mask when sharpening if I know most of the scene I want to be sharpened and I only want to mask out a little - thus, I use the paint brush with black to mask out those few areas on my 'reveal all' (white) mask.     Also, always be sure you have the mask selected before you start painting or erasing.  I've accidently started painting black or white on the actual layer rather than the mask before.  That undo or stepping back in history is sure nice for those moments :-)

p.s.  I too thank Keith for taking his 'Mom's Love' shot--that picture was my favorite gift from Christmas!