Shadows: Brick Step

Camera: Canon PowerShot Pro 1

I am so pleased to be receiving constructive criticism and suggestions on my photos. (Not that praise bothers me, mind you. Just that constructive criticism seems to be something that people are slightly less willing to dole out.)

First Btezra made a suggestion for a photo on my color photoblog, and now Visual Field has this to say about the current photo:

"I like the composition here & the limited DOF works well. I would like to see the in-focus band be a bit sharper. Maybe some unsharp mask on this one too?"

VF's suggestion sounded simple enough to me. In fact, it was so simple that I'd actually already done it on the version I posted (above), but I probably hadn't pushed it enough. I worry that the more I use Photoshop to sharpen my photos, the more artificial they will look, since after all, the Unsharp mask isn't actually capable of bringing something into focus that started out out of focus. And while this photo wasn't exactly out of focus to begin with, it also wasn't as sharp as it could be.

But I applied the mask again, a little stronger this time, again not as far as it could go, but to what seemed to me to be the limit of what looked natural.

Is it improved? Does it look too artificially sharp, especially given the limited DOF? Or worse, do you see no difference at all? It seems like sharpness is something I lose with the lower res photos I post here, so I don't know if the difference in sharpness is even visible here...

(I probably won't address every comment or suggestion with an updated photo, but at least for these recent suggestions, I thought I'd give it a try and see if they were right.)

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Brick Step	January 06, 2005
Camera: Canon PowerShot Pro 1 I am so pleased to be receiving constructive criticism and suggestions on my photos. (Not that praise bothers me, mind you. Just that constructive criticism seems to be something that people are slightly less willing to dole out.) First Btezra made a suggestion for a photo on my color photoblog, and now Visual Field has this to say about the current photo: "I like the composition here & the limited DOF works well. I would like to see the in-focus band be a bit sharper. Maybe some unsharp mask on this one too?" VF's suggestion sounded simple enough to me. In fact, it was so simple that I'd actually already done it on the version I posted (above), but I probably hadn't pushed it enough. I worry that the more I use Photoshop to sharpen my photos, the more artificial they will look, since after all, the Unsharp mask isn't actually capable of bringing something into focus that started out out of focus. And while this photo wasn't exactly out of focus to begin with, it also wasn't as sharp as it could be. But I applied the mask again, a little stronger this time, again not as far as it could go, but to what seemed to me to be the limit of what looked natural. Is it improved? Does it look too artificially sharp, especially given the limited DOF? Or worse, do you see no difference at all? It seems like sharpness is something I lose with the lower res photos I post here, so I don't know if the difference in sharpness is even visible here... (I probably won't address every comment or suggestion with an updated photo, but at least for these recent suggestions, I thought I'd give it a try and see if they were right.)

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