Bodobodo From Canada, joined May 2000, 553 posts, RR: 13 Posted (12 years 8 months 4 weeks 1 day 5 hours ago) and read 1310 times:
Hi,
I've just had a response to a lot of my submitted pictures. I submitted 47 and had 10 accepted. I sometimes seem to get the images right (I have 39 in the database now) but I still have trouble telling what gets some images accepted and others rejected. Any comments that you can give me on these would be greatly appreciated. They were all rejected due to low image quality.
Usairways@clt From United States of America, joined Aug 2000, 209 posts, RR: 3 Reply 1, posted (12 years 8 months 4 weeks 17 hours ago) and read 1140 times:
Pictures are very nice.
For the first one, it seems that the contrast is a bit off. I would try to correct that with some kind of software.
For the second, it looks good, I can't help you with technical terms without embarassing myself. All I really see is a bit of darkness and it looks like you "cleaned up the jpg." For example, on the far right on the grass, it looks a little, "weird." Same thing with the tire smoke (or is it rain?) it looks like it was touched up a little too much.
The BA 757 looks very good! I just think the ground looks a little too smooth.
The Canadian 737: the clouds look very strange. So does the lower fuselage when there are shadows.
The AA MD-80 there is just something about the sky. It is hard to explain, it just looks, odd. The rest looks very good.
I am getting sick of myself saying it: the clouds look funny. And, there are a couple specs of dust in the sky, but I don't think that really matters.
Everything looks good in the last one, but the texture of the grass looks a little off. Same thing for the sky.
Bodobodo From Canada, joined May 2000, 553 posts, RR: 13 Reply 2, posted (12 years 8 months 4 weeks 15 hours ago) and read 1127 times:
Hi Zach,
Thanks for taking the time to write those comments. The first two photos were underexposed in the original but if I try to correct it too much it brings out some grain and rough transitions. I will try to rescan them again because I think they are still interesting/dynamic images and not just static photos. I understand what you mean by the sky and grass...it's something I'm still working on. I need to try to avoid that happening while I try to get rid of grain in the rest of the image. The strange thing is the same things can be seen in virtually all of the ones that were accepted. Also I did the experiment of uploading 4 earlier photos without doing that and they were all rejected for poor image quality. As soon as I took the same originals and used a photoshop filter to smooth out the image (and the sky and grass along with it) all of them were accepted without reservations. I guess I'm still not quite sure what's expected. If anybody has any comments on good ways to reduce graininess or noise in an image it would be much appreciated. For now I'm using the "Smart Blur" feature in Adobe Photoshop 5 with High quality settings and a threshold of 5.5 to 6 followed later by either Unsharp Mask or Sharpen Edges. I've tried using the Reduce Grain feature in Adobe PhotoDeluxe as suggested by Gary Watt but I find it doesn't work quite as well.
Usairways@clt From United States of America, joined Aug 2000, 209 posts, RR: 3 Reply 3, posted (12 years 8 months 4 weeks 15 hours ago) and read 1124 times:
bodobodo,
I think you should definetly re-upload them. They ARE very good images. I, too, have the same problem with graininess. They are too grainy, so I try to improve them, but then everything looks wrong. I guess there is a really fine line between what is acceptable and what isn't.
Chris28_17 From United States of America, joined Jul 2000, 1439 posts, RR: 11 Reply 4, posted (12 years 8 months 4 weeks 13 hours ago) and read 1127 times:
Hey, i agree with you guys on the pic... just for fun i saved the picture i thought was the neatest and played around with it, cropped it a bit, made it smaller (personal preferance ) and did some color changes.. here it is, not too much difference but here it is.. by the way about the "dust".. i personally cant stand dust on a scanned picture! i ALWAYS remove the big spots (didnt on this pic)
By the way, i still think those pics were EXCELLENT
Bodobodo From Canada, joined May 2000, 553 posts, RR: 13 Reply 5, posted (12 years 8 months 4 weeks 7 hours ago) and read 1120 times:
Hi Chris,
Many thanks for taking the time to work on a sample image. The results do look improved. If it's not too complicated could you let me know what you did to improve it?
As for the dust I agree. I just started using a film scanner about 2 weeks ago and I'm still getting used to doing the touch ups. I've got the procedure sorted out but I'm still somewhat prone to missing a spot here and there.
Chris28_17 From United States of America, joined Jul 2000, 1439 posts, RR: 11 Reply 6, posted (12 years 8 months 3 weeks 6 days 19 hours ago) and read 1099 times:
Hey thanks for the comments, i am humbled (i only have 9 pics on here)
Anyway, pretty much all I did was reduce the contrast which i think was the only problem, and then increased the brightness (to counteract the darkening effect by reducing contrast) then i sharpend the entire picture, and then selected certain parts and sharpened them a bit more.
I think that was pretty much it... OH, i also cropped it a bit, and resized slightly.
Well I dont have all the answers, i just got a few more pics rejected but any other questions are welcome
Mls737 From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 7, posted (12 years 8 months 3 weeks 6 days 18 hours ago) and read 1112 times:
Hi Bodobodo,
I think that your pictures look nice (i especially like the KLM MD11). However, I think that the sky looks funny on all the pictures, probably because you tried to smooth your pictures too much. Sometimes a little bit of grain is better that having a sky that looks kinda fake (even though the plane looks really good!). Also try to reduce the size of your pictures to reduce the graininess. Besides, on some pictures the lighting is not ideal (For the KLM MD11, AA MD80,...). The plane side is in the shadow. Good lightning is hard to achieve, but really important (I don't know if it's me or what but I noticed that the graininess of pictures is far more obvious with poor lighting).
I think that most of your pictures look good, so just rescan them, don't smooth them as much, and try to upload them again!
Hope that helped.
Bodobodo From Canada, joined May 2000, 553 posts, RR: 13 Reply 8, posted (12 years 8 months 3 weeks 6 days 17 hours ago) and read 1104 times:
Hi Mls737,
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I feel damned if I do or damned if I don't with the grain. I've had a lot of pictures rejected for what must have been graininess in the sky. At one point I had 4 pictures rejected and as soon as I smoothed them (including the sky) using the same method as here they were accepted immediately without reservation.
The light was a problem with that KLM image and I'm not sure whether I should try to submit the original which is somewhat underexposed (unfortunately it's hard to get spray shots like that under bright sky conditions because all the rainclouds are still in the area). I'm using a film scanner and I'm trying to experiment with reducing the noise from scans. I agree with you that it is more of a problem under lower light but the other shots shown below were in very similar conditions. Sometimes I wish the administrator was a little more forgiving on quality in action shots like this than he is with analytical, static shots but that's just my opinion. At least I'm starting to get some of my shots on here now even though most of the accepted ones still say that the image quality is low. I've had some other similar shots accepted and they've become some of the most looked at shots of mine so I wish I could get these ones on someway, somehow. I'll just keep trying to submit the KLM shots in a rescanned, reprocessed form:
Bodobodo From Canada, joined May 2000, 553 posts, RR: 13 Reply 9, posted (12 years 8 months 3 weeks 3 days 22 hours ago) and read 1078 times:
Just to let everyone know I rescanned the KLM picture using new scanning software, did some reprocessing, and they've now been accepted without warnings. Many thanks to everyone who responded.
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From Canada, joined May 2000, 553 posts, 
From United States of America, joined Aug 2000, 209 posts, 
) and did some color changes.. here it is, not too much difference but here it is.. by the way about the "dust".. i personally cant stand dust on a scanned picture! i ALWAYS remove the big spots (didnt on this pic)
but any other questions are welcome
From , joined Dec 1969, posts, 
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