I've been having a lot of trouble lately with uploads. I'm not getting anything right and I'm getting a lot of rejections. So here I am in the forums again.

This is my first one I can't seem to get right. Below is the original full size. No edits besides the crop. I wasn't able to capture the entire stabilizer so I had to crop to the end of the fuselage. This isn't the one I uploaded I just wanted to see if you guys think this is even worth editing.


Here is the photo I uploaded.


I'll admit, it looks like trash. I should've just deleted it before it got screened but I was making food at the time and had it priority screened.
It got rejected for
- Low Contrast
- Motive
- Noise
- Overexposed
- Personal Message
- Quality

This was my second attempt and took the advice of the last screener to reduce the size. My first upload was 1500 px and this one is 1200. Every single time I reduce size my quality goes to absolute garbage. Compression is everywhere, exposure gets blown out, and my contrast disappears. As you can see from the original the quality isn't that bad.

Here are my steps when I edit.
Lightroom
crop
move to photoshop
Photoshop
Resize
Exposure
Contrast
Levels
Sharpen

I'll upload a few more later tonight but theres a lot going on here at CHS for the airshow tomorrow.

Thank you as always for your help.

My thoughts: contrast is a tad low, but overall the angle of the light is unfavorable rendering the bottom half of the airplane dark. Again, die to the poor angle of the light, the top of the fuselage looks a bit overexposed towards the back. . Motive could be better. At this angle the view is left looking for rest of the stabilizer which is cropped out of the frame.

A larger issue is tht the image is over sharpened with lots of jaggies visible. I'm surprised that it was not listed among the reasons for rejection.

Your work flow is similar to what I use. I typically do not have any issues with losing image quality when resizing the image down to 1200 pixels. Check the image quality in your camera to make sure it is set for maximum resolution and file size. I shoot in JPEG at 24 MP full size on my Nikon D800 and D7100 and I get good quality results after resizing.

Cheers,

Jehan

Jehan

Jehan thanks for the reply.

I do agree its a bit overexposed towards the back as well. I shot this in the middle of the day which isn't the best time. The jaggies are due to what I think is compression when I resize. The edited photo has zero sharpening added to it so I'm not sure where the jaggies are coming from besides my thoughts of compression. All of my original photos are around 5000 px wide at least and I shoot with a D500. I'm really confused as to what is going on.

Here is the original, with no edits, resized in photoshop down to 1200px. There is such a major difference from the 5200 wide original.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58762386@ ... ed-public/

Which resample method are you using when you resize? Bicubic sharper seems to be the popular choice.

Hello Matthew,

I use the "Bicubic (best for Smooth Gradients)" option vs. the Bicubic Sharper option. Perhaps that may be affecting the resizing results.

Jehan

Thanks everyone for the help. I use Bicubic for Smooth Gradients when I resize. It looks like the day I took that photo I just couldn't get it right. Either the lighting was wrong or there was some type of haze in the air. The quality of the original just isn't that good. I'm going to scrap this one. Again, thanks for the help everyone.

I took the liberty of downloading your full size original and resizing (bicubic, smooth gradients) and a pass of smart sharpen. Not sure what you've got going on but I think it looks better than what you've posted. Whether it's acceptable is a question I cannot answer...

Matt's version looks good in terms of sharpening, but it's still underexposed. In the levels tab, I used +10 left, +10 (or +20, I forgot) middle slider and 245 as right slider value. Looks better with those adjustments.

Matt, that does look a lot better. Still looks a little underexposed like Kas said but the quality looks much better to me. I'm thinking I added too much contrast now.

I still have a lot to learn with editing. I've been getting a ton of rejections lately that look good to me but aren't making the cut for various reasons. I'm watching as many youtube videos as possible and picked up the Nik suite to hopefully help my workflow.

https://imgproc.airliners.net/photos/air ... 926f33be7e

Here's a recent example of one that has got rejected for halos. I know what certain kinds of halos very tight to the fuselage look like but I'm not really seeing them here. Maybe I'm not looking for the right thing. Could someone help me understand the halo effect in my C-17 shot? For this shot I used the Nik suite and followed along with this in depth video pretty closely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtEBSKE2OKI

Is it all not irrelevant since the tailplane is chopped? Looks very awkward to me; coupled with the other flaws, I can only see another rejection if I'm honest......

Karl

JakTrax wrote:

Is it all not irrelevant since the tailplane is chopped? Looks very awkward to me; coupled with the other flaws, I can only see another rejection if I'm honest......

Karl

I wasn't able to grab the rest of the stabilizer but since its a brand new reg I wasn't sure if it was worth a try. With that being said I've determined it's not salvageable and won't be reuploading. I'm more concerned now with knowing what to recognize what's wrong with my C-17 photo above. Thanks for the feedback.

CassidysVacay wrote:

Matt, that does look a lot better. Still looks a little underexposed like Kas said but the quality looks much better to me. I'm thinking I added too much contrast now.

I still have a lot to learn with editing. I've been getting a ton of rejections lately that look good to me but aren't making the cut for various reasons. I'm watching as many youtube videos as possible and picked up the Nik suite to hopefully help my workflow.

https://imgproc.airliners.net/photos/air ... 926f33be7e

Here's a recent example of one that has got rejected for halos. I know what certain kinds of halos very tight to the fuselage look like but I'm not really seeing them here. Maybe I'm not looking for the right thing. Could someone help me understand the halo effect in my C-17 shot? For this shot I used the Nik suite and followed along with this in depth video pretty closely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtEBSKE2OKI

As many of the vets here will preach (example), an average shot shouldn't require more than a couple of minutes of editing in basic software (Photoshop, Lightroom) from open to save. That video seems a bit excessive if you have a good starting point.

JakTrax wrote:

Is it all not irrelevant since the tailplane is chopped? Looks very awkward to me; coupled with the other flaws, I can only see another rejection if I'm honest......

Karl

I've always understood that this is allowed, see example 15c here.

Kaphias wrote:

CassidysVacay wrote:

Matt, that does look a lot better. Still looks a little underexposed like Kas said but the quality looks much better to me. I'm thinking I added too much contrast now.

I still have a lot to learn with editing. I've been getting a ton of rejections lately that look good to me but aren't making the cut for various reasons. I'm watching as many youtube videos as possible and picked up the Nik suite to hopefully help my workflow.

https://imgproc.airliners.net/photos/air ... 926f33be7e

Here's a recent example of one that has got rejected for halos. I know what certain kinds of halos very tight to the fuselage look like but I'm not really seeing them here. Maybe I'm not looking for the right thing. Could someone help me understand the halo effect in my C-17 shot? For this shot I used the Nik suite and followed along with this in depth video pretty closely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtEBSKE2OKI

As many of the vets here will preach (example), an average shot shouldn't require more than a couple of minutes of editing in basic software (Photoshop, Lightroom) from open to save. That video seems a bit excessive if you have a good starting point.

JakTrax wrote:

Is it all not irrelevant since the tailplane is chopped? Looks very awkward to me; coupled with the other flaws, I can only see another rejection if I'm honest......

Karl

I've always understood that this is allowed, see example 15c here.

It's definitely a longer video but It describes in detail how to apply the contrast, resizing method, layering, and sharpening. He's not going into any crazy editing techniques. I'm not new to photography just new to the intricacies of photoshop layering and sharpening etc. Making the right moves in photoshop seem to be my issue for now. Thanks for the link to Royal's workflow guide.