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How to crop this photo?
On Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:52:44 -0800 (PST), RickCanada
wrote: Hi: I need help in cropping this photo. Uncropped, to me, it is unbalanced. I need to crop to a 4X6 format but I can't seem to get it right. Either too much of the sky gets cut or too much of the water is left leaving a horizon right in the middle of the picture. Any advice? http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/568938237EVjshK First of all, straighten that image. You have a nice equidistant far shoreline for this purpose. The slightest bit of skew in an image will be unconsciously perceived by the viewer as "something's not right", but may not be able to pin their mind's-eye on it. It makes the viewer uncomfortable and they don't know why. Uncomfortable = not pleasing. This one needed a counter-clockwise rotation by 0.77 degrees. Use your rotation tool so it fills in the new border after rotation with solid black. This is usually done by just selecting the darkest value in you image as your editor's background color. In this case black is black. This will give you a little more border to work with at the bottom later when cropping, and it needs that little extra black there. The image is "okay" but it can be a little more by doing a couple of things. (It's basic stock-photography so there's not a lot that can be done to make it "spectacular", but a few things will help to make it more pleasing.) Cut off the extraneous sky at the top. It bores the eye and it's an easy place for the mind to wander off the image. There is also a little too much of the tree clutter on the right. It detracts from the smooth tones and clean open expanses. You can use some of it to your advantage by noticing something in the sky in the upper-left. See that faint wisp of cloud pointing to the upper-left corner? Do you see a thin branch on the tree on the upper-right pointing to the upper-right? You can use those two diagonal features to help tie and balance the two corners of the image together. It's not so obvious that anyone would notice. A subliminal balance to keep the viewer's eye drawn into the image. Since you now have more black border at the bottom to play with (after that rotation), go ahead and include it. The contrast between that, the blacks on the right, and the lighter hues works well to frame the image. I thought it needed a tad more black on the bottom when I first saw it, the needed leveling easily creates it for you. See this example to how I would have cropped it. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3069/...d8bd770b_o.jpg Doing it this way strikes a good average between the oft' quoted "rule of thirds" and the golden-ratio, putting the most important subjects at an average of their intersections. Note too the slight crop on the left. I did it this way because one of the clouds was trying to lead the viewer's eye out of the image a little too much. It's all subtle things like that which will help with composition and make someone stay to enjoy a photo rather than have their eye slide off the view onto something else. One last thing. The blues in the sky were rather grayed-out (probably from using auto-white-balance?). I used an editing tool to increase saturation on the blue hues only, and also darkened them a bit. It gave it just that little bit more color needed to contrast and balance with the oranges of the sunset. Due to JPG compression I couldn't select the hues that needed to be changed with much accuracy, they were in large JPG sized blocks in your sample image, so ignore that in my example where they become obvious when saturated more. It won't happen on your original (it not having huge JPG blocks) if you take similar steps. Darkening and intensifying the blues also helps to frame the subject with the blacks, again with the intent of keeping the eye inside of the image instead of having it slide off of an edge. |
#2
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How to crop this photo?
"shane traster" [email protected] wrote in message ... On Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:52:44 -0800 (PST), RickCanada wrote: Hi: I need help in cropping this photo. Uncropped, to me, it is unbalanced. I need to crop to a 4X6 format but I can't seem to get it right. Either too much of the sky gets cut or too much of the water is left leaving a horizon right in the middle of the picture. Any advice? http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/568938237EVjshK First of all, straighten that image. You have a nice equidistant far shoreline for this purpose. The slightest bit of skew in an image will be unconsciously perceived by the viewer as "something's not right", but may not be able to pin their mind's-eye on it. It makes the viewer uncomfortable and they don't know why. Uncomfortable = not pleasing. This one needed a counter-clockwise rotation by 0.77 degrees. Use your rotation tool so it fills in the new border after rotation with solid black. This is usually done by just selecting the darkest value in you image as your editor's background color. In this case black is black. This will give you a little more border to work with at the bottom later when cropping, and it needs that little extra black there. The image is "okay" but it can be a little more by doing a couple of things. (It's basic stock-photography so there's not a lot that can be done to make it "spectacular", but a few things will help to make it more pleasing.) Cut off the extraneous sky at the top. It bores the eye and it's an easy place for the mind to wander off the image. There is also a little too much of the tree clutter on the right. It detracts from the smooth tones and clean open expanses. You can use some of it to your advantage by noticing something in the sky in the upper-left. See that faint wisp of cloud pointing to the upper-left corner? Do you see a thin branch on the tree on the upper-right pointing to the upper-right? You can use those two diagonal features to help tie and balance the two corners of the image together. It's not so obvious that anyone would notice. A subliminal balance to keep the viewer's eye drawn into the image. Since you now have more black border at the bottom to play with (after that rotation), go ahead and include it. The contrast between that, the blacks on the right, and the lighter hues works well to frame the image. I thought it needed a tad more black on the bottom when I first saw it, the needed leveling easily creates it for you. See this example to how I would have cropped it. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3069/...d8bd770b_o.jpg Doing it this way strikes a good average between the oft' quoted "rule of thirds" and the golden-ratio, putting the most important subjects at an average of their intersections. Note too the slight crop on the left. I did it this way because one of the clouds was trying to lead the viewer's eye out of the image a little too much. It's all subtle things like that which will help with composition and make someone stay to enjoy a photo rather than have their eye slide off the view onto something else. One last thing. The blues in the sky were rather grayed-out (probably from using auto-white-balance?). I used an editing tool to increase saturation on the blue hues only, and also darkened them a bit. It gave it just that little bit more color needed to contrast and balance with the oranges of the sunset. Due to JPG compression I couldn't select the hues that needed to be changed with much accuracy, they were in large JPG sized blocks in your sample image, so ignore that in my example where they become obvious when saturated more. It won't happen on your original (it not having huge JPG blocks) if you take similar steps. Darkening and intensifying the blues also helps to frame the subject with the blacks, again with the intent of keeping the eye inside of the image instead of having it slide off of an edge. This crop is better I think. But it's a pity you have to crop 4x6. It would look much better cropped wide. PDM |
#4
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How to crop this photo?
shane traster wrote: On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:10:20 -0000, "PDM" pdcm99minus this wrote: "shane traster" [email protected] wrote in message ... [ ... ] Like this http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/...9c21e633_o.jpg But then you have even more twigs and cloud to clone-out on the right, as well as cloning in some sky on the top. Now that I compare it to the other vertical, this one doesn't work as well. Maybe a compromise between the two might land okay. It just doesn't work well for vertical. I missed cloning out that little power-line over the pier... Eh, enough time wasted on this. I wouldn't say "wasted"; very instructive and appreciated, more like. -- Frank ess |
#5
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How to crop this photo?
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:33:50 -0800, "Frank ess" wrote:
shane traster wrote: On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:10:20 -0000, "PDM" pdcm99minus this wrote: "shane traster" [email protected] wrote in message ... [ ... ] Like this http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/...9c21e633_o.jpg But then you have even more twigs and cloud to clone-out on the right, as well as cloning in some sky on the top. Now that I compare it to the other vertical, this one doesn't work as well. Maybe a compromise between the two might land okay. It just doesn't work well for vertical. I missed cloning out that little power-line over the pier... Eh, enough time wasted on this. I wouldn't say "wasted"; very instructive and appreciated, more like. Well, one more note then. After rereading this I didn't want the OP to get the impression that that power-line should be cloned-out in any crop they might make of this image. In the horizontal compositions that power-line actually works to for a nice triangular element with the pier, leading the viewer's eye into the image. While also creating a nice mirrored contrasting balance with the linear bright lines in the clouds on the left. Both geometric elements tell they eye, "Go into the image." The power-line also completes the content, letting the viewer know some of the realism of today's piers and life-styles. It explains/defines/fits the power-boats more fully. If the linear clouds weren't there and it didn't form such a strong triangular element with the pier, then I would say, "your choice" on whether to take the effort to remove it or not. If those were row-boats, that too might be incentive to remove it if it wasn't a useful geometric. Now in the vertical crop, where most of the triangular element are lost, that bit of power-line now remains as an annoyingly distracting "what's that?" and needs to be removed. No doubt about it. The eye lingers there wondering what it is and by then you've lost interest in the content as a whole. Your eye falls off the page there without much incentive to return once you've spotted it. The two crop orientations are good examples to show why that power-line can work to the advantage in one and detriment in the other. Again, it's all subtle things like this that can make or break a good image. |
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