> I'm curious if anyone would think it an interesting theme for a future > gallery to offer up images that hold the highest number of techniques such > as levels, filters, layers, masks, etc.? For me, I think the most > "techniques" in photoshop I have used is about 4. This could translate I > guess to either an image almost excellent from the start, but more likely > a less than profound imagination._grin More is neither better nor worse, and indeed I do a LOT less to pictures that start out good in-camera :-). (I've been known to bemoan the amount of my life I've spent turning bad pictures into mediocre pictures -- that is, 'restoration'.) And stating this in terms of "number of techniques" runs the risk, even in this fairly enlightened company, of turning into a <crude-term-for-male-generative-organ>-size contest. On the other hand, I *know* I could stand to learn a lot more about "serious" "printing" (trying to generate files for making exhibition-quality prints of images), and I'm willing to guess that the topic is of interest to a number of other people here as well. This is "art"; so I strongly suspect that specific, detailed discussion is going to be more valuable than broad generalization (and especially than negative reaction to broad generalization :-)). It might be interesting to do a themed gallery with image versions we consider "fine", towards the high end of what we're able to do, where we show the prints together with as detailed a discussion of how *and why* we did it, each step along the way, as we can stand to produce. Another approach that might be interesting is for a small number of photographers to offer up an original image that those who cared to could try their hand at preparing for exhibition. Again, the description of what was done *and why* would be very important to making this valuable. We could even do an iteration every week (or month; give the discussion time to run!) for a while, with different people offering up an image and whoever cares to trying to make an exhibition version of it. (Images as camera originals, preferably in raw form, please, or full-res scans unedited). I'd be willing to contribute an original I thought had some potential for that treatment, if people were interested. I've done a couple of short articles with some simple work on photos, but I haven't yet written up a full-bore attempt at an exhibition print. But on the basis of the ones I *have* done, I can promise you that doing even a rather sketchy job is a *lot* of work. I think it might be worth it though. <http://dd-b.net/ddbcms/2008/06/using-curves/> <http://dd-b.net/ddbcms/2006/06/simple-printing/> -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
