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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2007-04-30, 10:37

Quote:
Originally Posted by GSpotter View Post
@turtle2472:Nice photoshop work. The only thing that irritates me: The meadow gets unsharp in the distance (probably due to depth of field), but the trees are sharp again...

Back to the thread topic: Seen yesterday while walking the dog:

Good eye, I missed the grass for the trees. I like the bug too, good eye.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac+ View Post
Thanks turtle. I'm looking forward to some comments when you have the chance. Good luck for your finals too.

One question - can you post a link to the Canon forum you joined? I know of dpreview, but I can't stand their forum layout (we are truly spoilt here ) and some of the comments are really inane. There's also photo.net but I don't know the community that well.
Thanks. I need it. In fact I'm delaying finishing up my research essay that's due today. I really should quit putting it off.
Photography On the Net. They are pretty much Canon only, though images are images when it comes to critiques.

Quote:
[re: the PhotoShop critique.
For some reason, I can't see your image in this thread - but when I went to your personal site I was able to locate it. Harsh lighting aside, it looks great - the clean white in front of the green background makes for a nice contrast. Also, I had to come back here to read what she was in front of originally, so your care with isolating here from her surroundings certainly paid off.

However, I have a few questions about the background: Are the foreground trees a separate layer from the background mountain? They seem quite distinct, particularly at the left edge. Is there some noise around there? Also, as much I as I like the shot of the girl being in front of the scenery, I wonder about the lack of background "life" artefacts - like a rug, or kid toys nearby. She just seems to have been planted there. Actually, on closer inspection, I think it is because she is in focus as are the trees in the background too. That's a pretty impressive dof - perhaps that's what makes it stand out in my mind. Maybe if the background were to be blurred a bit, that would help lessen the perceived juxtaposition.

[EDIT] GSpotter is on the money - the meadow goes out of focus and then the trees are in focus. That's a more accurate description of the problem! That said, I don't think your "average Joe" would pick it up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dmegatool View Post
As GSpotter said, the depth of field is your only problem here. You should one of theses solutions :
  • Blur the background (gradient way) to simulate the depth of field.
  • Replace the grass (maybe the mountain ?) so the picture looks like it was taken with infinite DOF.

Anyway, how many images did you use ? Does the trees and mountain are 2 separate thing ? Seems so with a little difference in t he colors and a minimal selection glitch on the tree to the left. But don't get me wrong on this, you did a nice job to this photo
You all three nailed it. I never noticed the grass dropped off due to the DOF. I was so focused on getting the blending of grassy meadow to the mountains in the background and trying to make it look like foothills leading to the mountains.

It's actually only two images. Grass and kid in one image and the tree line back in another. I took the tree line shot on vacation so I would have some "stock" images for situations like this. It paid off. Gradient blur is a great idea! Now that I can see the difference in DOF I'll have to work on it. Hopefully my instructor didn't notice it when he graded it. I'll let you know tonight after my final class with him.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
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