Hallo folks,
recently I start to feel frustrated about my acceptance rate that dropped significantly over the last months.
More than bad photographs, I believe to lack a kind of "eye" in order to evaluate how to set postproduction parameters in PS.
I know that mine it's a generic request but after consulting many experts, I received many different parameters and workflow. Start with resizing, then sharpening at 130, 0.3 then end with the resizing and so on.
Each opinion different than the other.
I feel confused. Maybe because each photograph has its own parameters and you need to work differently for each single shot.
Often I feel as the quality drop significantly after the resizing process at 1200 or 1024.
Thanks for advice
If you have any tips or suggestions to improve my workflow please let me know
Thanks
Simone

Simone - I am sure most long-time uploaders have gone through what you are experiencing more than once - it can indeed be frustrating. Things like new cameras, glass, and software can really make one loose the plot - currently I am in my own Photoshop hell as I recently upgraded versions and all my settings have been reset; things like "Bicubic blah blah blah" and 8-bit vs. 16-bit workflows. Not only is it frustrating, but a huge time drain, I doubt many of us picked up photography so that we could spend hours behind a monitor.

My advice won't be revolutionary, but here goes. I feel it is important to establish a base-line. a result that you can always get back to, no matter the circumstance. I would start with one photo, make it one you are happy with, and image that you really love, and start from there. Don't pick an image that needs a lot of post-processing to "look right." Create a process, one that is repeatable. I personally have no time for complex workflows, multiple resizing, multiple sharpening passes, etc etc. That takes way too much time. But that is me, the goal is to find a workflow that makes sense for you. Using that 'one' picture you identified above, you should be able to create an image that looks good to you, and secondly, is acceptable to this site (if that is your goal).

My workflow, if you are interested, is this:

Open image in Adobe Camera Raw

Apply "Enable Profile Corrections" under the "Lens Corrections" tab

Open image in Photoshop

Apply Auto-Contrast, if it looks poor to me I adjust it manually

Level the image

Set my cropping tool to fixed ratio 3:2 and crop the image

Resize image, most of my stuff here I do 1200 pixels wide, other places I use 1600. I prefer the larger size, but my image mostly get rejected here if I go bigger.

Sharpen using Smart Sharpen, most images get the same settings, if it's 1200 wide I use 28% Amount, Radius .6, Reduce Noise 5 Remove Lens blur 0

Save as a JPEG.

I am happy to help you, as I am sure are others who will do the same.

Good luck

RSK

thanks a lot. I hope my perseverance shall overwhelm my frustration here.. Sometimes I use the same settings on post production and the results turn out to be completely different. Maybe due to different camera, lens and so on.
Thanks again
Simone

clickhappy wrote:

I personally have no time for complex workflows, multiple resizing, multiple sharpening passes, etc etc. That takes way too much time. But that is me, the goal is to find a workflow that makes sense for you.

When I first began to express an interest in sharing my photos in a new way (in about 2003), I avoided A.net because the advice given to me at the time was that, to get my images up to scratch, I would need to involve myself in long, complex editing workflows. I gave it a shot one day and my first four or five uploads were accepted; my subsequent submissions had mixed success but I realised that, if you take a good photo to begin with, very little in the way of editing is required. I have never spent more than a minute or two editing photos for this site, and have never used layers or multiple sharpening passes or any of that other malarkey. If it works for you, fine, but those who claim you need to immerse yourself in all that to be successful here are wrong. In fact, if your images necessitate all that effort (challenging shots aside, before anyone mentions it!), there may be something fundamentally wrong with the actual image capture. Producing good photos and having a very basic workflow is, in my opinion, much better than churning out mediocrity that requires very skilful editing.