Processing

This photograph illustrates the frustration I feel about the limitations of the Internet/web for showing photographs. For example, here is a 500 x 500 pixel extract of the pre-web file (see white square above). This is about 1.4% of the area of the photograph. This extract is a medium-compression (level 6) JPEG of the pre-web version, so some quality has inevitably been lost below.

My information about my photograph of a Frigatebird in "Wildlife of the Galapagos Islands" also illustrates this problem, but in that case it works well as a simple photograph as well as a largish print.

This needed little except cropping, levels & curves to improve the tonal range, and variations & colour balance to improve the colour balance. It has significant extra saturation because the original slide was fairly flat, simply because of the nature of the weather at the time. Then the web version was sharpened using "unsharp mask".

Main Photoshop 6 and ImageReady 3 features used

• Image size - crop, image & canvas size.
  Image adjustment - levels, curves, variations, colour balance, hue/saturation, clone tool.
  Image adjustment using adjustment layers.
  Presentation features - automate - fit image, save as JPEG.
  In mid-January 2002, for the web version only - "unsharp mask" managed in layers created for the purpose.

Typical Photoshop 6 features not used

• Layers (except adjustment layers). Filters. Over 90% of the tools.
  But in mid-January 2002, I started to use "unsharp mask" in layers to sharpen the web image.