Editing, purists and the future of Photography.

Could just be my rotten eyeballs!! I upload straight from my PC though used to use Photobucket.
Maybe my niggle is due to looking at the full size originals and the detail in them and then reducing them, often considerably, and then viewing the reduced sized version on here.
So just out of curiosity here's a wee experiment -
The image on the left is unsharpened, that on the right had been sharpened (and flipped)
The bottom image is an unscaled crop of the original.

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Ok - not perfect focus, but it was a very quick shot, at an angle, through the double-glazed kitchen window when I saw Mr Blackbird watching me while I was taking photos of birds on the feeder during "Garden Watch".​

 

I think you are right Woo. I'd best act on the letter I've had from Specsavers and get my eyes tested. They keep telling me I'm overdue a test!

Edit - Thanks Armandii, you've diagnosed my problem

 

The thing with that particular Birdie is that he watches us! As soon as he spots us in the kitchen he's up on the window sill expecting to be fed. He's actually trained us to respond to him rather than the other way round. If we are out in the garden we've got to be careful not to step on him as he come so close.

 

HDR as a photographic tool and post processing method was primarily developed to enable scenes of high contrast to be captured, so dark and light in the same photo which is something the human eye can do but the camera cannot capture very well.

If it is used correctly you should not be able to distinguish that it is an HDR shot at all, and only an experienced 'tog would be able to tell it was HDR. I think I have shown that here before and posted some HDR's and normal photo's and asked people to guess which is which. Done correctly, or rather not overdone you simply cannot tell at all.

But it has now become an art form or a branch of photography all of its own whereby no shadows exist and super saturated colours proliferate. Its not my cup of tea but if the user likes it then good luck to them. HDR has also now become a base requirement for other art forms too, such as Urbex or Strobist work.

Dave, sharpness being lost on your photo's could depend on how the server is set up here, then also how the actual site software is setup too, for example ImageMagick. might not be setup too well on the server or some other soft used, then the forum software may not handle photo's as you would wish, for example it may resample your image down to 80% or some such.

Steve...

 

Armandii . going back to your comment, i have never really thought of my photos as a high standard but thanks anyway I still have not yet mastered my camera but someone on here is being a great help.

A lied!!!! I did lighten two of my Kenya bird pics using Paintshop Pro 9 as it is all I have. They were very dark being backlit but the end result was so too obvious and 'looked edited to me' and I haven't used it before or since.
Does it to anyone else?

 

Two super shots Strongy, but as you've already noted, being back-lit it's hard to get exposure perfect. I don't know if you used it but 'spot metering' rather than averaging is handy in situations such as those.
Paintshop Pro is pretty good, I use PSP8 quite a lot as it's fairly simple and quick, though I do also use Photoshop too.
I don't think the image of the Eastern Chanting Goshawk shows any signs of being too obviously edited. In fact you could have probably taken your editing a bit further as per below where I've tweaked the levels a little and sharpened slightly.
Hope you don't mind me messing about with your photo!

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