This is, as it came out of my Powershot (resized): And this was after some playing with Mr. Potatoshop: Not to much Postwork: cropping, a little colour-correction, working on the brightness of the darker areas via gradients, cloning out this annoying street lamp (didn't work very well .. too lazy to do more) and than adding some soft lights from a blurred version of itself :-) PS @Michelle: if you think, things like that should be discussed via IM or Mail, please feel free to say so. I'm not sure about what's use and what's misuse of this forum :)

Feel free to share your work like this.... It's interesting to see the different methods people use to obtain the final image. :~)

Ummmm Mr Raven? May I? Your original needed no work done to it! I like it both ways. Yes I can see a difference and quite honestly I can tell around the trees that something had been done to it. (The dark blues gave it away!) The only thing that I saw in the original that may have needed removing was the street lamp, but quite honestly I am all for posting raw work and I probably wouldn't have noticed it (the lamp) had you not told me. Honestly? I don't have photoshop, I have paintshop, so not sure how to fix the horizon in PSP7. :-S

There must be an option to rotate it. I just dunno where ;). If you can't find it, please send this pic to me via Mail, i'll gladly fix this minor issue for you! Bout posting raw work .. hmm ... i'll add that later as i'm in a little hurry right now. Thanks for your reply! :)

Raw work is a good thing! :)

Hmm ... good raw work is essential for bad starting material can't be saved by postwork. But what's wrong about doing some postwork? There's lot's of scissorhands out there ;). As stated here (by enax?), it'll be best to do the composing on site, but all to often, there's some cropping to do afterwards. Does cost some resolution, but it depends on what you'd like to do with the pic if this could be a problem or not. In any other aspect .. it depends (me thinks g). Trying to sell a pic as a postcard for example, i'd do any postwork i feel is needed. The same applies in the galeries here, where i'd like to have opinions on the picture as i want it to be (postworked or not). Doesn't matter if this is done via a perfect shot or via more or less postwork. Sometimes, postwork is even necessary to do things, which cannot be done any other way. Of course, if e.g. it is a pic for a challenge, one must say if it's raw or not and i do agree, that it'd be a nice challenge once, to do something without any postwork. But that's just my noob-thinking. I'm very interested in your (and any other) optinion. :)

Hmmmmm food for thought! I don't do too much to my images if anything at all. (including cropping) The way I look at my own work is if I don't like something about it, I try to go back out there and shoot it again trying to alleviate whatever it is I didn't like the first time around. Unless of course it is a sunrise or a sunset, which you can not capture again, then I would probably scrap it as I have done with many of my sunrises and sunsets, unless of course it had brilliant color and the problem was minor. I am not saying that postwork is a bad thing, it is just something that I don't do. Maybe I would view things differently if I had Photoshop instead of paintshop and could do magical things with it??? I do know that I have a ton of photos here that just aren't worthy of a posting in my opinion. Take this pic for instance, it won't be seeing post at all, (except here) because to me the colors just aren't all that special and the whole series came out fuzzy like this! I know that I could sharpen it in PSP and add a little color to it, but why? (Grrrrrrr!) So tommorrow morning at about 6:30 am you know where I will be, hoping that mother nature will take out her paintbrush and paint the sky for me again. Don't mind me Raven it is just the tempermental artisit in me coming out LOL!

OK here it is again, sharpened and colored. I still don't like it! LOL!

Getting a second change isn't what i'm used to, sorry. Of course, if you do get a second or third try, this is way better than cropping. In some other cases, postwork could get it better, but you're right that if a pic just isn't good enough, no postwork can save it. About PSP: hey, Potatoshop is just a tool. Someone who really knows how to use PSP will be able to do anything 99.9% of all PS-user will ever do. It's the artist working with this tool, not the tool itself, doing wonders (even if some PS-freak will tell you something else). :)) Do you mind if i play somewhat with that pic of yours? Have a nice evening ... time to go to bed for me. :-)

Go ahead and play with it! You do know that I wouldn't let just anyone play with it? LOL! Sweet dreams and may there be Angels on your pillow! :)

hope you don't mind if i jump in here :] nilla... to straighten in PSP7... under image at the top--> rotate--> degree of right or left now with you crop tool, trim off the edges most all my work was done with PSP7, most recent PSP8, even though i have PS7... i prefer PSP & would be glad to show you what i can about the program... think of it as your digital darkroom

Hope, you're having the sweetest dreams right now :) Thanks for letting me play with it. Of course, not anyone is allowed to do that. beeingproud! Can't promise anything ... let's see evilgrin @Cynlee: thanks for assisting! I used PSP5 quite a while .. but after getting my hands at PS6 .. ;)

Tried to keep the feeling of your other pictures and see, there's still some nilla in it. *gg*

OML!!! I actually like this image now! But it could do without my ugly mug in it! LOL! I had tried PSP8 and did not like it at all, so I kept 7. Cyn, I do know about the rotate feature, but it seems everytime I rotate something in PSP, I lose clarity!? I will be getting a scanner here for this machine and soom will be able to share my 35mm pix with you all as well. Please know that in the past month I have started taking three cameras with me in the AM as opposed to one that I had been taking with me. And thank you Raven, I had sweet dreams, did you? Brenda aka: Nilla

great work Raven! @ Nilla...well, PSP8 has just upgraded to 8.1, said they listened to complaints & fixed them... i have yet to reinstall the new version, just received it yesterday in the mail from Jasc... i found a lot of improvements with 8 & it does have the option to change the workspace back to what you're use to with 7... PSP8 looks much like PS7 now as far as rotation, losing clairty will happen with any program...most digital images will need sharpening with "unsharp mask" before further editing & again after rotating, & again after all editing & resizing is done (you also need to work with raw, tif or bmp images... ecspecially if you are saving in between working on the image, to prevent further image compression & when you are satisfied with the completed image you can then resize & save it as a jpg to upload, but you should keep your original, large tif to print from, but you probably know this already) look foward to seeing your scanned images :]

Looking forward to seeing them too! :) Thank you Brenda! Did have sweet dreams but i don't remember what it really was :) @Cindy: sharpening can cost you further clarity. Take a picture shot with a high ISO-value and use unsharp-mask ... if you're not extremly cautious, you'll get double filesize and a ruined picture. There are better ways .. but i don't think, that i'm telling you anything new :))

OK now I really want to know what you did to this image to make it so pretty! And while you are at it, is there some kind of matting that you use for your pics on here? Or is it a frame? If it is a frame, where did you get it? I have frames that came with my PSP and have been searching the PSP sites looking for one that will work for my images. To put it simply I like the way you frame it looks so professional! :)

i hate interrupting like this nilla, think raven went to sleep over there... just trying to help, you can tell me to butt out if you like & i won't look at the ebots as far as the frame... it's not... in PSP, go to--> image--> add borders, use you color palettes... this looks like 2 symmetric pixels in a lavender & several more in black around that, more at the bottom... then add your font as another layer on the black why do i feel i should just shut up...

Attached Link: http://www.patchesangel.com/pspframes1.htm

Cyn! It is OK you have actually been very helpful here. I never really messed with the frames in PSP before but I decided to go on a frame hunt tonight and have come up with some really really pretty ones. Please don't ever feel like you are interrupting. And thank you for teaching me know how to create my own frame. :) I am including a link here, go check them out! Brenda :)

thank you Brenda, i never know if i've gone too far & don't want to sound pushy... i just luv my PSP & if i can help someone with it then i just can't stop myself from saying so... i have learned a lot about the program by using it to create my own frames... before i showed up over a year ago, i don't think many photographers here were using them, it was a way for me to learn different techniques & be more creative i have the link you provided open in another window, there's some real beauties there... i'd be very tempted to try them... but as she says they must not be claimed as our own work & should probably give her credit if we were to use one... thank you so much! i shall go explore it bit more :D & if there's anything i can help you with, feel free to ask... also they have PSP tutorials here at RR as well as the Jasc homesite & many others now, when Raven wakes up he can tell us just what he did to your pic cuz i'm curious to know too, ...always learning :] hugz cindy

Well I was thinking on giving the site credit on my home page? It won't allow me to do it where it says sponsors! It only allows certain sponsors to be given credit!? That makes no sense to me! And quite honestly? I had a PSP site, my other manager was the one that dealt with framing. I dealt with making sigs and such! Have written a few tutorials myself!

Hi :) Hmm .. went sleeping and today, i did miss my ebots .. sorry!! About that picture .. if you allow me to do so Brenda, i'll just copy this from my IM .. : ---------------------------------- What i've done with the other one? Ouch. I'm not working in a style, where i know exactly where to go and than look for a straight way to get there. At least not, if playing with pictures as i did with yours. Playing around and looking what's happening. Can't reproduce that in any step. But i do remember some elements: converting to lab-mode. Blurring a/b channels. Partially sharpening the brightness. (=reducing grain a little) converting to cmyk. Colour adjustment (lesser green, more red and yellow) back to rgb playing with some gradients to further adjust colours duplicating the image-layer, blurring the second layer, choose "soft light" as layer mode, reduced alpha to 40% (may be 20 or 60 too) duplicating the first layer a second time, moving it to the top. Layer mode "multiply negative", alpha 20% (getting it brighter) creating a 4th layer with some rendered random clouds. Layer mode is saturation (not for sure) About framing: i don't ever use pregenerated frames. Lovely option within PSP, but i feel, that each picture deserves his one frame, even if they look similar most of the time, but this is to let anyone see, from whom this pic is. But i have to admit, that sometimes there are some PS-styles in play, if it comes to titles ;) @Brenda: these sponsors here are only those merchants, selling their stuff at r'osity. At least, that's what i thought. Have a great evening. Playing an hour with PS and than, it's pillow-listening-time again. huggz Thomas

Sweet dreams and may there be angels on your pillow! :)

Looking out for them! Thanks my dear :) Have a wonderful evening and let there by some angels on your side of the ocean too!! hugz