Yakumo's World
Temple Roof, Autumn
Posted by GJC (Kyoto (京都), Japan) on 28 November 2008 in Plant & Nature.
As I noted once before, I find that images that are very sharp in my Lightroom application become blurred when posted, though I am careful to keep within the 800x800 framework. I focused this shot on the roof tile at the end of the roof, so there is naturally some blur from the short DOF I chose. But even the focal point is not in focus. I tried re-importing the re-sized photo and sharpening it in Lightroom, where indeed, it looks even sharper. But here it's very much out of focus. I wonder if any of you have noticed a difference in the A+ membership? I'd rather not pay the extra money, but I also hate to have my images look less than what I want them to. Any thoughts?
Hikari from Kumamoto, Japan
Well...I was sick about this question and I end up buying a A+...and there is a difference indeed! , my photos look again as in my computer... these cheeky administrators...
I was about to move the blog , but I just change it when I came to Japan and didn´t want to make people crazy...
Anyway ...your photos are great !
28 Nov 2008 5:42am
Steve Rice from Olympia, United States
This is a great image. Love the colors.
I use Nik Sharpener Pro in Photoshop and have pretty good luck with that. I don't know about the A+ membership.
28 Nov 2008 5:43am
Hikari from Kumamoto, Japan
Can you see my first comment? , I realized that if you post a comment with a link aminus3 consider it as spam.Well just in case...again:
Well...I was sick about this question and I end up buying a A+...and there is a difference indeed! , my photos look again as in my computer... these cheeky administrators...
I was about to move the blog , but I just change it (http://fotomenorca.blogspot.com) when I came to Japan and didn´t want to make people crazy...
Anyway ...your photos are great !
28 Nov 2008 9:48am
@Hikari: Thanks so much for your visit and your thoughts. I really appreciate both.
Hikari from Kumamoto, Japan
I forgot ! , what a day I´m having here....it´s not about sharpness!! , it´s about the amount of pixels lost in the uploading process and the artifacts generated specially in the borders.
28 Nov 2008 9:53am
cat from Tel Aviv, Israel
Gorgeous photo, the colours are superb.
It's annoying about the loss of pixels - Wordpress makes you "optimize" the pictures so they are ideally (ideally for them of course) less than 1MB, and then it squishes them into the frame - drives me nuts.
You could try getting your own hosting (it's not so expensive - check out godaddy dot com) and using something like pixelpost software...
28 Nov 2008 11:20am
@cat: Thanks for your visit and your thoughts. I really wonder whether it might be best to launch my own site, and I appreciate the suggestions. I'll think about it for a while. I can't imagine you aren't satisfied with your site, however, as you take the most startling and original shots and they seem so well reproduced on your site.
Lorraine from Gatineau, Canada
So beautiful, it's an excellent view of Autumn :) don't go away...
28 Nov 2008 4:59pm
Suzanne from Huntington Bch, United States
First off, you've created another marvelous image. As to aminus3, I've also noticed a loss of sharpness on this site but try not to let it bother me as, IMO, what matters is what's in the image rather than how sharp it appears here.
28 Nov 2008 7:20pm
Howard F. from South Pasadena, Calif., United States
Simply beautiful! I can't describe this with any other words.
I don't even go in to my post page and examine the sharpness and saturation because I know it is not there after I make the upload. I am thinking about getting a paid AM3 account, but it has to offer more than just better image output, maybe customize CSS and color, do those text boxes like on flickr... I don't know, but the paid account package looks somewhat weak. For what it is worth- FREE- and the overall editing, posting, comment management, ad/banner-free, etc- Aminus3 is still the best. So be patient and perhaps new features for paid account would come out.
28 Nov 2008 9:04pm
Pixim from Nice, France
Here, I like the delicacy of your photograph, as well as your research for the detail. Of this blazing red carpet) of leaves covering the roof appears the key of vault Bravo ;)
28 Nov 2008 10:45pm
Laurie from New Jersey, United States
I am not sure why you are having this trouble. I do not have the A+ membership and I also posted identical photos to 2 different blogs. I do not see any appreciable difference between the photos that I post here or on my other blog, except that I started posting much larger landscape orientation photos on my other site since getting my new camera. The differences are really pretty negligible IMO. Of course you can look for yourself here: http://www.capturethisphotography.com/ Keep in mind that my newer landscape orientation photos are in a larger format than what I used to post so you may have to go back in the archives for the best comparison.
I also use lightroom but still bring most of my photos into Photoshop for re-sizing and some of the curves adjustments. I like to adjust curves in Photoshop rather than Lightroom. I also prefer to resize them and sharpen them there. If you look through the photos on both of my sites you cannot really see any difference (in the older posts not the recent larger ones) and the .com site uploads the full image that I load onto my server. They seem pretty equal to me and my .com site does not compress my images more than what I have uploaded.
I think if I were going to pay for a site, I would do what I did with my blogger site and customize it totally and use a domain and an FTP server. I use GoDaddy, for my domain and Hosting and it is only like $50/year for both. I can post images any size and quality that I like. Unless Am3 comes up with more customization, ie larger landscape orientation images, template customization etc. I will continue to use the free service especially since I have the other blog. It is a wonderful service and a great community. I love the comment management here. My blogger based blog comment management is just ok.
At any rate this is beautiful with the intense fall colors.
I just thought of something, when you sharpen the image do you do it after you re-size it for posting? That is usually what you need to do to keep it sharp after you resize it.
29 Nov 2008 12:57am
@Laurie: Thanks so much for this very informative and helpful post. I really appreciate the thoughts and the time you took to respond.
As to the processing, I don't have Photoshop, so I do everything in Lightroom. As you mentioned, I've tried sharpening images both before resizing and after resizing, and though I see a difference both ways in Lightroom, it doesn't seem to make any difference here in Am3. Yet I agree that Am3 provides a great community and I'm not sure I'm yet ready to put in the time to manage something on my own. I did try on another photo resizing it to 1600x1600 (instead of 800x800) and that seems to have helped sharpen it up, though it may just be my wishful thinking.
I don't think I'm able to put in the time to manage another stand-alone site like yours, so I'll stick with this. I like the community here as well. I'll keep thinking about it. But I genuinely appreciate your thoughts.
Emmanuelle from Sg, Singapore
Autumn leaves always give you a nice shot. The blurred background is really nice.
29 Nov 2008 4:49am
Liang from San Francisco, United States
I like it a lot, very nic ewarm colors applied here!
29 Nov 2008 7:36am
Richard_Irwin from Belper, United Kingdom
I have found that if I edit in Photoshop, and use 'Save to Web & Devices' I can compress the 800X600 image to about 100K JPG without losing any sharpness on upload. My guess is that if the image size arrives with a small filesize, the AM3 engine leaves it as it is.
I've not noticed a single difference between the image I'm editing, and what appears on AM3.
I hope this helps.
29 Nov 2008 4:24pm
Lucca from Cologne, Germany
I have the same problems with sharpness after uploading to AM3. Even if I use "save to web" (600 px for the long side). I tried it with different qualities and it makes no difference. Please have a look at today's and yesterday's post. The original is much sharper on the focus. In earlier day I haven't had these problems (i.e. Nov. 22nd). Did you recognize the problem already some weeks ago, GJC?
30 Nov 2008 4:30pm
akarui from Kagoshima, Japan
I like this picture very much. The actual size of your picture is 101KB (in large option) which is not so bad as that size is often much less of 100KB on Aminus3. This reduction lowers the quality of an image and it is normal that it appears not as sharp. Laurie says that she doesn't notice much difference but depending on pictures this can be very visible. This is for comparing the upload picture and what is seen on Aminus.
Now when you make some adjustments in lightroom you are working with a full size picture and at the end you resize it to 800 pixels. This reduction has the effect to lower the sharpness and it is recommended to sharpen an image at this stage. When you export an image from lightroom I think there is also an option for auto sharpening with the resizing options?
5 Dec 2008 12:34am
Walter from Watkinsville, United States
I have been away for a while and missing out. Wonderful capture here as well as great dialog going. As for sharpness, I noticed a huge difference when I actually got a new computer (iMac). I now see so much I was missing out with my 8 year old Dell. On the site, I see a degradation of the photo seems to happen to me as well. Currently using PSE, I save my file using windows resizer to a level of 2000 x 2000. This gets me to the required upload size. The larger the file uploaded, the less the effects of the am3 engine creates on my downscaled photos. I love the community here and the efforts to create a stand alone site are too much for me now. As far as losing sharpness, I have begun to factor that into the photos posted and calculate it in my view of the photo. The better photos still stand out head and shoulders over the so so shots. If you ever change, you must send your address to all because we have come to depend on seeing your photos.
16 Dec 2008 1:49am
Nikon D300
1/80 second
F/5.3
ISO 220
168 mm (35mm equiv.)