Hi Lou, Your pictures are lovely, before and after. When you take such good pictures, there sometimes isn’t too much that you can do to them, because they are so good in the first place. But it sure is fun to see what can be done anyway.
I took these 2 years ago, and haven’t done anything to them, but it would be fun to try, if I could find the originals. Some could really be lightened and cropped.
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http://homepage.mac.com/janec3/PhotoAlbum5.html>
Jane
Lou, what can I say…beautiful !
Jane, ditto !
Thanks Jane & Jodi.
Jane: "nicesunset.jpg" is beautiful, and a tremendous understatement! ‘Nice’ doesn’t begin to describe it. You captured a beautiful part of the country wonderfully. And it’s often amazing how just a little tweaking in Elements can really enhance a picture.
It’s funny how each picture has a story behind it. "IMG_0769.jpg" is so perfect, it almost looks set up. And you know, it might’ve been. I took that photo from a bridge over the river, and there were about half a dozen photographers who were also taking pictures of the same subject. The photographers had heavy duty equipment (SLRs, huge tripods & camera bags stuffed with lenses) and there I was with my little Canon A70 pulled out of my bike’s under-the-seat zippered pouch. It appeared as though this was either a paid shoot or some very serious amateurs who bring their own props. So I just snapped my picture and left.
I for one am glad to see you folks using dot.mac for your websites. It may not be as affordable as pbase, but it’s Apple.
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http://homepage.mac.com/scsmith>
Steve
I sometimes have a bit of trouble using the Mac.com pages, I had a difficult time uploading stuff. My fault, I just am so used to pbase, because they are soooooo easy and I get lazy.
I must add to my .mac pages as they look so nice. I love your beach album, Steve! I will just have to work a little harder and get used to mac.com and add some new stuff. Jane
Jane,
Thanks for looking!
re: uploading…do you use iPhoto? It’s automatic with that. Make a folder of your images, select all, click Homepage, add captions and pick a theme. That’s about it.
Steve
Well if we’re playing with websites – can anyone see this? <
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~sestewart/pictures/>
(Album generated with jalbum – a java app which works on all platforms knwon to mankind and is free – I like the way it extracts the EXIF info, and is infinitely customisable if you know HTML and things.. but also has quite a lot of options straight out of the download – this is the most basic one) Also includes an FTP client for uploading to the webpage.
The photos have all been heavily Elemented.
Susan S,
Susan,
I can… wonderful!!
I really like the fish — makes me wish I was there (with my tackle, of course) — and the panoramas.
Thanks,
Byron
Byron – thanks for the feedback – I was getting a little hung up about correctly setting permissions on files and it’s nice to know that someone else can read it! When I shift to my new ISP (waiting on ADSL approval now) I’ll have 15Mb of free webspace to play with and i’ll be able to put up some more images. (but at a different URL – this one will vanish soon if things go to plan!)
Susan S
Susan S,
Was the Iroquois longhouse at Crawford Lake or some where else?
g.
Hi Steve, No I can’t use iPhoto, as I am still on good old OS 9.2.2. But if Santa arrives with a new Mac, I will have iPhoto. Still love pbase though, its the best for me now.
Hi Susan, These are beautiful photos, but we cannot see them beyond thumbnail size. Would love to see them like you could with mac.com or pbase with the larger size. Jane
Hi, Susan. They work great on my imac in panther. Very zippy to load, too.
Grant – indeed Crawford lake it was.
Jane – clicking on the thumbnails should link to larger images (and the EXIF data)
susan S
Steve: Gotta love the dinosaur. Is there any sport your kids don’t play in? They look like they have a lot of fun.
Jane: .Mac makes your life a lot easier in OS X. You’ll love upgrading.
Susan: Your site looks great from here (it’s snowing today 🙁 ). I used JAlbum for a while, but then got lazy. Maybe I should dust it off again. Your site looks impressive. Have designed or modified any templates yourself, or is that a stock template? (Oh, just re-read your post; it’s a stock template.) Can you post a few "before" pictures? I’m curious as to how much people tweak their images with Elements. I have to tweak essentially every picture (a reddish cast is the worst problem; contrast is another biggie). I’m wondering if it’s something I’m doing wrong, something with the camera, or just the way things are with digital photography. I also worry about fixing too much. Getting rid of that red color cast is easy, but what is it really doing and is it overdoing it? For example, on the big snowman in one of my pictures, I tried to remove the red cast, but then Elements made the picture look like it wasn’t taken at sunset (it was). So I’m trying to figure out when enough is enough and when enough is too much. 🙂
Susan,
No problem seeing this. Some real nice pictures there, you must have had a great trip.
The Jalbum looks interesting and I may try it. I like the PSE galleries but I am having problems getting a gallery uploaded to my Comcast Cable web space. (I’ve resorted to uploading one pic at a time using Comcast web site building software). First the Comcast forum said the files had upper case and that was not allowed. But even after I changed all the files to lower case it still does not open. Maybe Jalbum will work. But most likely it is something I just don’t know or understand about web sites and uploading.
Pete
Hi Susan, I still can’t get the link when I click on the image. Saved one to my hd, and made it larger, very beautiful! I wonder why they don’t become larger clickable link as they do with pbase or mac.com. Slide show option not there either. Maybe I should try it with a different browser,,,,,
Edit,
Wow, there is the answer, Netscape won’t give us a link, but IE does, WONDERFUL pictures! Jane
Lou – some of the images are very heavily edited. I’m using a Canon G3, and with the ignore EXIF plug in installed and colour management off, the images look reasonably coloured on the whole. Most pictures are acceptable with just a quick levels and a sharpen (the one with a fish); some are de-noised and then sharpened (eg the Iroquois long house, which was taken at ISO 200 – I use an action from
<
http://www.geocities.com/rnlnero/PE2stuff2.html>. ) The ones of Niagara were de-misted using unsharp mask at a low percentage (around 30 to 40) and high radius – around 50) and then had a curves layer applied to increase contrast, particualrly in the sky.
iirc the ones of the Toronto skyline were taken with a polarising filter so that had already dehazed it and brightened up the blues; contrast was popped a bit with curves then a sharpen. The panoramas were both done in Elements, – I want to have another go at the Toronto one as I only worked out the trick to reduce the haze using the unsharp mask after I’d finished, and I did some burning on it instead which I’m not altogether happy with.
Only one of these images has extensive colour adjustment – and that was to get an effect rather than realism – and the jpegging of that one has done it no favours.
On other images from this set (not webbed as yet) I have used targetted HSB adjustment (using the dropdown menu) to demphasise the greens where they seemed to be unecessarily dominating the image.
I’ll try some before and afters when I get the chance – it’ll give me some more HTML practice!
Susan S
Susan
Crawford Lake Eh! I am so sorry I was working as you were within a twenty miles of where I live. In fact Crawford lake area is one of my dog walking areas. Not only that but it was a regular area where I played in my youth. I spent much time free climbing the escarpment, watching birds and learning how to draw and paint on that very sacred land. Of course when I did this there was nothing there but a memory of the Huron. As an aside I did spend some time there with my high school art and geography teacher Robert Bateman. In those days he dabbled in painting and bird watching today he is a very famous Canadian artist and naturalist.
Grant
Lou,
My absolute favorite is img 711. I love the composition; the trunk framing the right of the image, the branch extending the width of the image, the bands of color alternating with the drabness of real autumn. The uniform band of color near the bottom grounds the meandering color in the upper part of the frame. The tall stems of the colorful plants near the bottom, the way they stand gracefully. That is a gorgeous image.
Eric
Lou – Thanks for posting the before and after pictures. It’s one of those "a picture is worth a thousand words" kind of site where we can quickly learn how to improve our pictures with just some simple cropping and a little enhancing. Of course, having some great original pictures like yours to work from helps a lot in the final result!
Marilyn
What fun! I enjoyed all the pictures, Lou and Jane! You have such beautiful surroundings back east, especially in the fall season.
I loved the way you did that, Lou, with the befores and afters and the thumbtacks! Wonderful.
And, Jane, that last sunset one was breathtaking.
Thanks for sharing.
Lorace
Susan: Thanks for the before and after pictures. It’s interesting to see how everyone uses Elements. You really made great pictures excellent.
Grant: See, if you didn’t work 24×7 you might not’ve missed her. 🙂
Eric: Thanks, that’s fantastic praise from someone who sells such beautiful pictures. Wow, Alaska and travel: I’m totally jealous!
Marilyn & Lorace: Thanks, it’s always scary baring your soul and exposing the "before" pictures (and sometimes even the "after" pictures), but this is such a great forum with wonderful people such as yourselves.
Sorry for the delay in feedback, but I was dealing with an Adobe Illustrator CS serial number snafu yesterday (Lou M "Trouble installing Illustrator CS" 11/5/03 6:22am </cgi-bin/webx?13/14>).
Lou,
Took me a while to get thru so many messages, and I just found your Before and After images. They are all good shots and obviously further refined by your artistic eye and technique with PSE. All the more illuminating by this presentation. Congratulations and thanks.
Shan
