ah, the joy of shooting in RAW and having a little photoshop know-how top shot is straight outta the camera with no post-process, bottom shot is after exposure/levels/noise reduction/sharpen [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
can i vote for straight out of the camera without offending? but then i've always liked a little darker look to things gary
I like how the darker one shows the lights in the windwos, but the sky in the second one is good showing off the clouds.
In the darker image, the point of focus for me is are the lights which leaves me a little lost. The second image focuses my attention on the building and also attracts my gaxze more towards the boat for some reason. I think you get more bang for the image with the lighter version.
Oh, pooh! I really like both of them for their differnt qualities. I'm such an indecisive punk when it comes to these things. Can I use a Life-Line?! ???
personally, i like #2 or i wouldn't have posted the image. i like the brighter detail in the sky and the building and the overall increased sharpness in the photo. i know some folks like #1 but i dislike the dark shadows esp. when #2 shows so much more of the overall scene.
Tim, if I've done anything against the rules by copying your picture, I'm sorry. Please remove this reply if it's out of line. I like to use acdsee, and I am passing time by at work to see how it's results compared to yours. I clicked its shadow/highlight tool and then sharpened a little bit. It doesn't look too bad. Anyway, I'm just playing. thanks.
I prefer both pictures Seriously, they both evoke different reactions. I do like the darker "night time" photo, but the retouched one really has a unique amount of detail. The great thing about shooting RAW is the fact you have the option to get a variety of great images from one source photo. It does take more work to process, but I now shoot almost exlusively in RAW just because I don't even want that one "perfect" shot to be hopelessly noisy or underexposed, and I don't want to waste tremendous amounts of disc space storing Exposure Bracketed versions of the same shot.
