Here is a quick fix to improve your digital photos. It will make you look like a pro in under 30 seconds!
Someone suggsted i should post it, so here it is.




Open your picture in photoshop or what ever your using.

Photoshop7 (can be had for free)

1: find curves-click and drag the line down until the pic is to your liking. you'll see how the pic lightens and darkens ect ect i just drag it down to take the white cast out of the photo. Simple curves version i know, but it works fine.


Then:

goto Filters-sharpen-unsharp mask

Set threshold to 1
radius to 0.1 pixels
amount to 500% to start

then under the photo preview window hit the + sign upto 400%

At this point you will move the Radius up to about 0.4 or so, more or less, depends on photo, see the preview photo blow out and become pixellated with noise ect ect ect. Move it around some to see what i'm talking about..back down the radius until its all gone, then go up one. On this org. photo i went 0.4 radius, way too much, you'll see. then i backed down to 0.3 radius. (wont need to move the radius to far)
Still too much, you'll see all the little pixel squares showing that your sharpening the noise ect in the photo.
This is a good point to fine tune........ adjust the amount slider a little down until the pic is the level of sharp you like. You can click the little check mark (preview) to see the differance from org. to the sharpend photo. There are hot keys to do this, but im not going there! KISS






First pic is the orginal
Second pic is done as above.




Unsharp is the last thing you ever do in photoshop



Once you do that curve/unsharp on your photos, you'll be amazed how much better they look.

let me know after you try it what ya think.

PHOTO By 3dDream

Before:


After:

If anyone is thinking about a camera purchase for shooting everyday photos, and posting pictures of your plants, here is a little advice:

You DONT need a expensive high mega pixel camera. You should buy a low price Digital SLR for a couple reasons.

Don't spend your money on a big money dslr body, spend the money on good glass! If you are never going to shoot sports, or blow up
over 8x10 size for prints, your wasting your money.

You can create great pictures for web posting with a outdated nikon d70......Camera glass (Lens) never is a bad investment.....ever.

You want a DSLR that shoots Raw, (you'll thank me later) and has good white balance adjustments.

White balance adjustments is important for shooting under hps lights.
Google search DSLR how to set white balance or DSLR white balance cards...

If anyone is thinking about a new camera/lens purchase, feel free to pm anytime.

[ickyweed]

I dont have acess to pm's yet. I know very little about shooting photos and have only recently tried messing with the BW balence and other settings on my camera. Currently for my macro's I have been reversing my lense and I want to take better photos but have no clue what direction to go, buy cheep glass or a ring to mount the lense backwards. Sorry if I sound like a child but I have no clue as to what the correct terms are.

[bromhexine]

very pretty looking pics

[3dDream]

Nice point about cameras. The the hdr pic above was shot on a 5+ year old 5MP point and shoot. It does have the advantage that it focus 1 cm away from the lens.

I really want to thank you for the tip! I really works!