Cropping & Noise Reduction

Bike Jump
Photo Information
Copyright: Leanne Snow (ls_photography) Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 1123 W: 357 N: 1143] (7508)
Genre: Places
Medium: Color
Date Taken: 2008-02-02
Photo Version: Original Version, Workshop
Edited by: Jim Pinkham (jpinkham) Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 163 W: 1 N: 244] (1195)
Edited Image Upload Date: 2008-03-16 16:46:33
Camera: Fuji FinePix S700
Exposure: 3.5, 1/45 seconds
Workshop Note
Since "anything is welcome," I thought I'd take a stab at this, Leanne. I immediately began to see your challenges, especially from a compositional point of view. I focused mainly on cropping because that triangle in the lower left corner strikes me as a dead zone that doesn't add value to the image. I also ran one pass of a noise reduction filter and sharpening in The Gimp, resized to get closer to the original proportions you had, then restored your frame and text.

I know you already did a lot, and there were few pixels left to work with, and you may have already zoomed a lot to get this. These all have obvious quality impacts. But, all things being equal and at the risk of suggesting what you already know, two other points come to mind:

1. Be sure to run any noise reduction you plan to do in advance of sharpening. After that, in a two-pass sharpening approach, you sharpen next, before cropping or anything else. Then the second pass, if you do it, comes once you've sized the image to the size you plan to post (before any framing).

2. Whenever possible, take advantage of the full space available for posting. I noticed your final file was about 99K, or half what you had to work with.

Hope this helps. It was a worthy shot for you to go for, and a valiant attempt you made at PP in less than ideal circumstances.

Best,
Jim
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