Hello all, long time no speak. I am posting about two recent rejections that I need help with figuring out just what I can do to improve them if any.

First up: SOFT OVEREXPOSED



As far as my levels measure up, the brightest white not being a reflection is around 91 on a scale of 100 (or about 249-251 on a 255 level scale) As for soft, where should I be looking? I actually thought I may have overdone it a bit.

Second up: SOFT



Again, the entire image is quite sharp. Even the original is quite sharp and it started life as a 7000+ pixel original. Is the perception that the front of the engine nacelle is soft? That area will always seem soft as it is a rounded soft metal piece. Please look carefully at the rivets and other supporting evidence in the image...

Either way, if I am still considered wrong, could a screener willing to do so show me graphically a better result I should go for in these two? The second one I have no appealed so it may stand a chance. The first one has been appealed and rejected once more so that one is binned 

Thank you...

First one does look a tiny bit soft. Could use a bit of sharpening overall. Doesn't look overexposed to me. Only a few small areas are blown out in any channel, and it doesn't really look too bright either.

Second one looks OK to me, though it probably could stand a bit of sharpening without being oversharpened. But looks sharp enough as it is.

Thanks Vik, but I think it would be splitting hairs without any real gain pro or con. I have always felt if the proposed fixes are so minor, there is enough threshold left for acceptance, no? I always thought the screening is done with a bias to accept not to reject. So given that, I believe these are certainly within the possibility of being acceptable.

I gave the second another pass of SS (30, 0.2) and it is very oversharpened in some areas, less so in others so I don;t think that's the case here. That's why I wanted to hear from the screener that rejected it if possible or another screener that could perhaps point at a bad spot in it. All the jaggies in the image are within the range usually acceptable for my images in the db lately.

Quoting gonzalu (Thread starter): Again, the entire image is quite sharp. Even the original is quite sharp and it started life as a 7000+ pixel original. Is the perception that the front of the engine nacelle is soft?

I didn't screen it, but just a general observation: it is very difficult to make 1600 pix images look sharp. Easy solution is just submit at a smaller size, but if you feel like pressing ahead with this one, the whole top half looks a little soft.

Thanks Dana. You know me and I love to press on :P

I have re-edited and reshapened and hope it looks better. I don't think the image is difficult to sharpen as it was close to full frame at 36mp there is enough data recorded. I have a few 1600px images in the db I can use for reference.

Cheers.