NIKON D3200 TEST SHOT: Down on the Farm at Sunset III (UNSHARP MASK 50--NO OTHER POST PROCESSING)

--Lannie

Love the moon!  This was on the front page as the latest image up for critique,

Thanks, guys.

Jamie, your comments have been very helpful.  About all that I can conclude is that the camera settings for internal processing of landscapes are such that no additional post processing is necessary in many cases where color is concerned.  In fact, in at least one case, I have even had to back off on saturation on shots with no post processing.  That said, (1) the sun was very low here, and (2) there are other presets that I could have used which are more conservative--and perhaps these are the ones that I should have used.

I finally have to agree with you that this is better than the one in which I used curves and shadows/hightlights in Photoshop.  Those are powerful tools, but they must be used with a very light touch, in my opinion.  In some cases, using them at all can be too much if used on top of the camera's "landcape" presets.

In addition, for what it's worth, very little unsharp mask is needed to bring out sharpness for screen display--as low as 0 threshhold, radius 1 pixel, and quantity 50.  The quantity here was 50.  Even 85 was too much.  For printing?  I have not printed any of these, but I am wondering if any sharpening at all would be called for in printing.

--Lannie

the more you play, the further you push, eh?  looks super now.  best, j