mikemorley

Thanks for the great suggestions. The frustration is that I see what I want in Corel - quality of colour and tone matching the shots of others I like in PhotoNet, but outside of Corel, I don't like the result. I think the first step for me is going to be taking a look at what's going on with Corel. The camera is an Olympus E300 with captures that look great on the camera monitor as well as in print.

Does shooting in aRBG matter if the captures are RAW? Perhaps I need to see if RSE exports the Oly RAW file in that colour space. I'll follow-up on the Corel colour management as well - I have explored it before, but invariably, finding support for my hardware (which is nothing special, but not all name-brand) has always been a challenge.

 

Thanks for the answers. Helpful!

In CorelPhotoPaint I am seeing a much better balanced and brighter

image than I see in the browser after uploading to PN - exact same

files. I'm really frustrated by this, because some good images are

looking dull and poorly executed in the browser while prints come out

nicely.

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated - how to match appearance in the

browser to what I see PhotoPAINT. I suspect some advice may

be "switch to PS"... but I'm happy with PhotoPAINT otherwise and not

keen on starting over at this point. Is this a Corel issue? Browser

issue? Windows settings? I suspect something in the softward end,

because the same poor tonality is visible from other computers I use

to eyeball my stuff.

 

My pics come into Corel via RawShooter essentials. The captures are

RAW format and the processing in Corel is on the 4-5MB jpg files out

of RSE.

I use the 14-45 on an E300, so I'm well acquainted with it. First, the 14-45 kit lens is dead slow. A focal range of 3.5-5.6 is sluggish for an all-purpose lens like this. Depth of field is a challenge to restrain, even at maximum zoom with those values. Second, the vignetting with this lens zoomed wide really makes nonsense of the "four thirds" format - what good is four-thirds if you have to crop to 3:2 so that dark corners beyond correction are dropped? Oly has provided a software patch for this in a firmware update for the camera's processing logic, but that's not much use to those who prefer to process their own RAW files, which with this and most other digicams is mandatory if you want to preserve any range of tone in anything other than a flat shot. Finally, compared to the C8080, I'm finding this lens provides captures that are less saturated and less sharp. I'm assuming the Kodak sensors in the E300 and C8080 are very close in quality, if not the same item. I do love the E300 and I continue to invest in it - I'm just annoyed that it was only available in a kit with this lens (at least where I am from). To turn to the better (and weather sealed) Zuiko Digital 14-54mm costs more than a couple of hundred dollars. This is my only real disappointment with this budget DSLR. Otherwise, I think it's a fantastic machine, and it's a pleasure to shoot with. I have purchased a Sigma 55-200 and have found it to produce very good results... there's a "budget" lens that's worth the money...

There's also a firmware update that provides an even better solution - mirror lock-up from a selectable 1-30 seconds. Not only can you use this in place of the self-timer, you are going to get sharper images because you won't have mirror-slap shaking the body. The Olympus site has the firmware update - you need to run their client software (from the kit) on your PC to do it.

I used to own a C8080. There is a firmware update that is supposed to address some kind of lock up - no telling if this is the same problem, but do update your firmware. The other thing that happens with this cam is the battery door sometimes goes ajar. Check it is firmly closed with the catch in place. Sometimes it's not even visible that the compartment door is slightly not seated right, but the cam will still stop working.

 

The C8080 takes great pics. For whatever reason, Olympus put an absolute winner lens on that machine, far above the crappy prime lens they ship with the E300/EVolt kit DSLR. If you can work through the annoying autofocus challenges, you are going to get some beautiful and colourful pics from the C8080 - don't give up on it!

It's a double-edged issue - if you post larger files, users can click to see the larger file and will get good results if you still restrict the size (to what max?), but on the other hand, take a look at details like fine tree branches, etc., on pics PN resizes, and you'll see annoying jpg/dithering/aliasing artifacts around those details... then will people bother clicking to see the nicer large pic?

Who can point me to some general info on how best to manipulate an

image to upload to PN? For example, I typically start by processing

an image from RAW for a final destination of print. Once that's done

and saved, I resample down to 640x480 (since I find ugly jpg

artifacts result if I post a larger image and the browser/PN resizes

to display it). When the image is resampled, I typically adaptive

unsharp it a touch to bring clarity back to the edges, but at this

low res, I also find that sometimes brings up some unwanted

brightness. Beyond that, I'm not doing much more for PN presentation

as most other (WB, brightness, colour, tone, effects) filters have

been applied already to the larger print version of the file I made

earlier. I suspect, based on others' work I'm seeing, that I can do

more to improve the quality of what I post here (yes, yes, take

better pictures is the first one!). Thanks for any thoughts...