Re: More and more fun with M8 images
Gentlemen,
Cheers for the feedback. I sent this image to the local Leica rep and he thought it was a bit over-sharpened on his monitor. He has one of those new 24" glossy iMacs. I'm running a Cinema Display (matte surface) and it looks spot on to me. It would probably look a bit soft on a CRT. I'm curious as to how other posters are gauging the appropriate sharpness given the potential disparity in viewing monitors.
Jack-a lot of fussing about with color contrast in the a and b space of Lab
~ Jeff
He's right, it is a bit over-sharpened for web viewed on my Cinema display -- for example, the jaggies are prominent on the chrome arms of the chair and her bracelet.
HOWEVER! I often do that on purpose with my best images when posting them online to protect them from copy-paste theft. On our workshops, I've used a student's posted 1200 pixel web jpeg, uprezzed it using the methods we teach and print it out at 16x24. And it looks darn good! No, not as good as using the original file, but so good it makes the above point. FWIW, over-sharpening early wreaks havoc on up-scaling protocols, so it's probably the best insurance against that kind of unauthorized use; so for me it is not an issue as I know it could be re-processed for print with more appropriate sharpening...
Re the processing, lighting is perfect and I like what you've done with the skin tone, saturation and contrast, as well as the fact you've desaturated the background at the same time. That combo accentuates the "harshness" of the life she's probably lived...
Cheers,