Your thoughts on this ?

[brianw999]

I just uploaded this Lightning jet pic last night. It looked good on my CRT screen at home but on the LCD screen at work it looks horrendously grainy and much lighter. The reason behind asking for your comments is that I just changed my ATI X550 graphics for an ATI Radeon 1650 Pro. This new card has given a much richer colour and I rather think I may need to make some adjustments. Other, previously accepted pics look good and I used them as a comparison to this pic while processing so it may be simply a crap LCD screen at work. Anyway, your comments would be appreciated.

[wwshack]

Tricky one Brian. If it were mine I would like to have see the checker pattern a bit sharper. There seems to be a lot of noise on the raydome and under the wing, perhaps you have over cooked it a tad.

Looking at the Levels on your pic it suggests that its slightly over exposed.
It would be worth a try altering the mid-tones or pulling down on the dark-tones on curves.
It may be worth trying this tutorial to sharpen and keep the noise at bay http://digitaldog.net/files/USM_tutorial.pdf It gets a bit clunky when you get to the Selection stage but I eventually manage to get it to work by trial and error.

One of the best things that I even done was to use a Pantone Spyder monitor calibrator. (I'm lucky in that I can borrow one from work.) Being able to calibrate your monitor is money well spent. Having tried the Spyder once and had I not been able to borrow the Spyder I would have bought (the slightly cheaper) Pantone Huey by now. It's well worth the money.

The shot has got a lot of good points, I wish you luck with it.

[philh]

I would have to say I think it is too grainy and too soft in places. Sorry mate.

[exmanx]

Can't really tell here at work Brian as I'm using someone elses monitor. Is this at Rochester? If so, where?

Andy

[ollieholmes]

To me again it is to noisy. Otherwise i like the photo.

[CPH Aviation]

Looking at the photo on my wifes lap top there are tons of noice and grain, but on my own CRT screen its looking fine!

Soren

[RingwaySam]

Noise/grain and undersharpened IMHO...

[brianw999]

OK, thanks for the help folks.

I think I'll pull from the queue and rework this one but first I will calibrate my monitor, initially with the Adobe supplied software in CS2......which, if I had a functioning brain at the time, , I should have done first after replacing the graphics card.

Andy. The aircraft is indeed at Rochester. Going from Maidstone towards Chatham on the A229 the aircraft stands behind the fence at the Chatham end of the airfield on the left. Its a Gateguard for the British Aerospace establishment although the gate is actually closed and is only used, I believe, as a response access gate.

[brianw999]

OK....so I calibrated the monitor. Amazing how much difference a new graphics card makes !!

Re-processed the pic, and this time I left the Shadow/Highlight tool out of the process, concentrating on adjustments in the histogram instead. Overall and selective sharpening and contrast/brightness were the only other adjustments. Oh, and I used background layering to balance the sky and aircraft exposures.

Better ???

[philh]

Amazingly so! Maybe just reduce the contrast ever so slightly?

[ollieholmes]

Much better now.

[LX-A343]

Much better now, but a bit of a problem with lack of contrast (grey clouds didn't help much ) and weird artefacts on the tree line in the background on the left of the aircraft.

[brianw999]

OK, I think we're getting there. This with +10 contrast.

Gerardo, I think the artefacts you refer to may be a mist that was rolling in from the direction of shot. The day was a wet and dull one which began to warm up a bit around the time the pic was taken. It was quite a remarkable temperature change too of about 5 degrees C. I was at work at the time and went from wearing a fleece to shirtsleeves very quickly.

Anyway, here's the pic.....

[LX-A343]

This one is not as good anymore IMO. the upper right part (almost 1/3 of the page) is almost blown out. The other one looked better IMO.

[magic48]

Gerardo, I think the artefacts you refer to may be a mist that was rolling in from the direction of shot. The day was a wet and dull one which began to warm up a bit around the time the pic was taken. It was quite a remarkable temperature change too of about 5 degrees C. I was at work at the time and went from wearing a fleece to shirtsleeves very quickly.

Nice explanation there Brian. However, I believe that these artefacts on the treeline become visible when your magic wand tool is not used properly. Something I've seen many times when editing my photos. What I'd try in that case is adding that part of the treeline to the area previously selected with the magic wand tool when adjusting brightness/contrast of the sky.