too much saturation...or not?

[katanaismybike]

are these too saturated? [i've been playing with a 'velvia vison' plugin for photoshop...
any comment / critique is welcome..

[katanaismybike]

By the way...
pic 1. Dunmail Raise
pic 2. View towards Grasmere from Sourmilk Ghyll
pic 3. Haweswater. (panoramic stitch of three images)

all in the English Lake District.

[williamkazak]

I would try; image/adjustments/levels for the top two in order to get them even brighter.

[Erik]

After you try William's suggestion. I'd try bumping up the contrast in the top two until they have the contrast of #3.
-IMO, It's not the saturation. What you have is fine by me. I just think the contrast is a little low in #1 and #2.

[katanaismybike]

cheers..thanks for input

[lomcevak]

Operating on the theory of better late than never, I second Erik's idea. I'm starting to bump up the contrast on a lot of shots and like the results (plus it makes them look sharper, I think).

[williamkazak]

There is an important point to consider when doing any of these suggestions that were given for brightness and contrast on these pics or any other pics.That is, if your monitor is set too bright or too dark the corrected or original pic may appear correct to you but may actually be way off.I worry about that when I do a job and then I do a lot of manipulation.If my monitor is dim then all of my brightness manipulations would be making what was already good become too bright.

[Erik]

Did you have to go there William!

As for me: That's something I decided I can't concern myself with. What I mean is that I have my monitor set to medium, factory setting brightness. The rest of the monitors settings are based on the calibration thingy that I use. (It's reviewed in our section here)

I'd like to add that when I get stuff back from the printer, it looks right on - as far as I can tell! <- (he said with a humble look on his face. . .)

So I bite the bullet and hope that clients and onlookers have halfway decent monitors when they see my images. . .

[clarrieu]

speaking of better late than never, in general I love these photos! with regard to your question about saturation, whenever I use an effect or a modification, I take it to where it striokes my eye, and then I back off a few points. I do this because in my own case I have found that what catches my eye at the moment has very often looked "funny" or even "weird" when I revist a couple of days later.

The lake (or inlet? ) photo (last one) is first rate IMHO.

The middle photo is an amazing panorama. I downloaded and fooled a little. My knee jerk editing consist of using the "exposure and lighting" settings of my software, and reducing the "shadows" setting and increasing the contrast settng in some combinaton. I "believe" this has the equivalent effect of UV and Polarizing filters, but I could be wrong. Anyway, the result was a photo that I found more pleasing to my own eye - the color differentiation was more extreme. I suspect that you and I "see" things a bit differently.

As for the first photo, I like it more and more as I keep coming back to it. I fooled with contrast and shadow, and then compared to wha happenes with saturation, and my own opinion is that saturation tends to result in softer (blurrier) looks, even when used judiciously. IMHO shadow, contrast, or both do more to "improve" a photo.

The question in my own mind is how much manipulation is "fair" in representing what the eye sees?

I hope I'm not coming off as too snooty here. I myself am an amateur, and my equipment is a good consumer brand and level digital and my photographic education limited. You captured some great scenes that have me jealous that you were able to make the trip and do what you did!

Regards

chuck

[katanaismybike]

Please, feel free to post your edit... I'm interested to see.

Like you suggest - I now often use the 'adjust til it seems right, then back off a little, as reviewing the image later it often looks overdone.

It's interesting to look back on these, In revisiting these, I think that the colours in 1 & 2 look 'wrong'.
I may try to dig out the originals for reworking..

SS