Acei profile

[Obliviou$]

Profile shot of my male Acei.
Posting only one image to get more in-depth critique. Tear it appart, tips how to improve in shooting technique and photoshop.

http://aquatic-photography.com/gallery/files/3/7/9/acei_profile.jpg

You might see some hard comprimising, when I uploaded this picture as 99kb, and APF compromises it to 42kb :confused:

[Obliviou$]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/AlexChristensen/acei_profile.jpg

Thru Photobucket.com

[phishphorphun]

Excellent capture. Super pose showing all the fins. Quite natural exposure for this guy (who BTW reminds me so much of my Copadichromis Mloto "ivory head") allowing the true colors to be exposed. I think you just about nailed this one Alex.

I may tried a little of the shadow & highlight image tool to try and lighten up the underside a little more. It also would probably decontrast a little of the white trim on the dorsal that appears just slightly overexposed.

But I think I'm beeing a little knit picky. It truly is a great shot. :nice:

[hir0]

Nice fish Alexander. Glad you posted the photobucket version, wasn't sure if the other one included the artifacts d2 forum software or post processing. care to share your technique? by looking at this image, it looks like you might have been using the flash head pointed directly in the tank. the whites on the fish are slightly overexposed, and the underside of the fish is dark and the shadows are fairly 'hard'. other than the exposure, the photo looks good. the fish is sharp and in focus - and the background is ok. i did notice a little bit on the bottom, where it looks like you did a small clean up job. i agree you could try the shadow highlight tool, but more to remove the highlights than to bring out the shadows. also if you haven't already - i'd try to bounce the flash to even the exposure and soften the shadows.

[phishphorphun]

Here is my version. Cropped out the frame script, shadow/highlight (with 75% highlight and only 10% shadow), +5% contrast, -5% brightness, 15% 1.5 USM, cloned and blurred for cleanup.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v636/phishphorphun/acei_profilecopy2.jpg

[Obliviou$]

Bobby, good post prossesing, but maybe just a bit much contrast?

hir0, I put the flash right over the tank as you said, no bounce.
There's a little feeding hole on the top where I posistion the flash, I don't think it's large enough to make a bounce though.