I submitted a picture for the free challenge. My score was 5.8072 which is pretty good for a beginner like me, but what could I have done different or better.
I submitted a picture for the free challenge. My score was 5.8072 which is pretty good for a beginner like me, but what could I have done different or better.
Contrast boost more than anything would have helped. or maybe a little more manipulation in the B&W conversion. Looks kind of flat. The capture is great though.
Contrast boost more than anything would have helped. or maybe a little more manipulation in the B&W conversion. Looks kind of flat. The capture is great though.
wot David said ;)
Great opportunist shot that I gave a 7. Only your 4th challenge and almost a full point better than your 2nd highest scoring shot. All you need to do now is keep on getting better.
Perfect timing, good composition for horses. the conversion to b/w is kinda flat. Since this was an advanced editing challenge you could have used layers to lighten the darker horse a bit for more details in the dark areas as well as lightened the darker side of the other horses face a bit.. You could have also edge burned to bring the viewer in off the corners some. LIttle things like that to make the b/w conversion stand out more.
So I understand that it is mainly my Photoshop and English skills that have pulled me a little down. The title is difficult since they were playing. Some people suggested a color version but I don't know if that would have helped - the colors are wonderful though. How do I post a color version here? In my portfolio or what?
Thanks for the comments. Please tell me more - I am learning!
FWIW, I was somewhat joking about the title - although I may have given it an extra point. :) Nothing wrong with your title though. Didn't mean to mislead you. You must be new here or you wouldn't take anything I say seriously anyway. :)
All I can say about the image is to echo what the folks said (some of whom are our Horse photo "experts"). Very minor tweaks might have gotten a little higher score, but keep in mind a 5.8 (and upper 65 percentile) in a free study is an excellent score - for anyone.
I think this would have been better in color. Either that, or like others said, with some more contrast in the B&W. It's a really nice shot, I just think it needed a little more WOW in the contrast or color department.
1) Increase contrast slightly using an S-curve in the curves tool.
2) Use white and black brushes on a 'soft light' layer to bring out some detail in the hair/main and lighten some of the shadows on white horse.
3) Darken corners and upper portion of frame with gradient fill on an 'overlay' layer.
4) Unsharp Mask filter
That's about it. Not saying it is what you envisioned, just a few steps that I feel improve the capture.
I think Falc has a good point about the cropping. More negative space would be nice for context and impact. cheers,
It will automatically use the two colors you have selected in your color palette (sorry don't know what those two color boxes on the left side toolbox are called). You can mess with the settings by clicking inside the gradient box (in the popup box where you see the rectangle full of the gradient) - from there you can move the little sliders around, click inside the boxes and change the colors, add more than two colors, etc. Pretty hard to explain from there, but you can mess around with it and learn.
I would also suggest using your help-menu when trying to learn anything (and I mean any application you're ever trying to use on a computer) - this is how I've become pretty good at all kinds of computer applications (databases, html code, excel, you name it).
If you get that far and have more specific questions, feel free to PM me... I hope this helps
The capture itself is excellent but unless you have an incredible capture out of the camera you need to make it more pretty in post in order to do well. Mpeter's edit would have definitely helped but color tends to hold the highest potiental in challenges (nudes and intimate portraits notwithstanding).
