Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Lake Seal Mt Field NP.jpg

Lake Seal

Reason: High quality/resolution. Illustrates the geology of the Wellington range well. The only image available illustrating some of the terrain up above Mt Field (rather than the waterfalls at lower altitude). I wish the remainder of the walk was more successful, the weather turned sour unfortunately. I'd add it to the MFNP article in the future if it had more content. The approximate FOV is 110*180 degrees.
Articles this image appears in: Wellington Range, Mount Field (Tasmania), Cirque
Creator: User:Noodle snacks

Support as nominator --Noodle snacks (talk) 10:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support. Good EV, although the scene seems a bit flat (owing to the exposure blending/overcast sky, I guess) but at the same time the rocks on the left make my eyes hurt! Maybe local contrast has been bumped up a bit too much? Just a guess. Also, surely with exposure bracketing you could have done more to hold those blown highlights? Easier said than done, I concede. Otherwise though, I do like it. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 11:09, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Since they aren't blown in the strict sense I did an edit which just emulates a grad ND. I think the edit is an improvement. Noodle snacks (talk) 12:45, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sure, in the strict sense they're not blown but they do seem for all intents and purposes to be - you don't really see any detail above values 245ish. I had a quick play (PS Elements at work and dodgy LCD monitors) and I think that decreasing the contrast and brightness of the clouds slightly makes the brighter parts look more like clouds and less like blown highlights without darkening the darker parts excessively. I think you'd have to do it with the raw files ideally though, I got a bit of posterisation here, but it could well be the monitor rather than the image. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 13:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I noticed a stitching error about 4/5th of the way across, running all the way from the mountains on the horizon down to the rocks... It's subtle and I won't change my vote. I think some creative cloning would mask it nicely, since there's no detail of any significance to retain, just textured forest. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:09, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Fixed it in the original. Posterised or not i wouldn't mind seeing an edit as to what you mean with the sky. Noodle snacks (talk) 00:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Added Edit 2 to demonstrate. Very rough but this was what I had in mind. The clouds aren't as punchy but they look more like real misty clouds IMO. At least they do here on aforementioned crappy work monitor. I have no idea what they look like on a decent monitor. You tell me.. I'll check when I get home tonight. Maybe I'll cringe and upload a new one. Or give up. :-) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 09:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Edit 2 looks much more realistic to my eyes. Of course I wasn't there though :) Kaldari (talk) 16:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - I'd pick edit 1 on realism. The clouds were fairly dark. The contrast is mostly because they are backlit. The bright reflection on the lake should really be there too. Noodle snacks (talk) 06:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        Fair enough. The reflection on the lake is still bright in edit 2 IMO, as are the clouds (although yes the darker parts are not as dark). The edit mainly served to decrease the brightness of the highlights so that they didn't appear to look blown. Just my tastes though. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 07:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support ~~Original~~ Edit 1 + correction of stitching error and Oppose Edit 2 Edit 2 is very dull and is more of a photoshop job than a picture. It almost removes the fact that it is sunny on the far away valley. The bright lake seems like a promise, a hope for a better weather. I'm not a photographer so i probably have no business talking about technical aspects but if it isn't blown it should stay as it is. Real sunlight is bright, sometimes even blinding, it shouldn't be "corrected" for sake of "correctness" Ksempac (talk) 09:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- It isn't direct sunlight though, it's light filtered through the clouds. Furthermore, I didn't touch the brightness of the valley, only in the sky, so I don't see how it "removes the fact that it is sunny on the far away valley". It isn't, strictly speaking anyway - as far as I can tell it's mostly overcast, although the dark and light patches exist of the thickness of the clouds vary. In any case, if there were no clouds, the sky would be blue, not white, and only a tiny patch on the right is blue. Look, I'll respect your opinion without biting too hard, but clearly ALL of the photos images in this nomination are 'photoshop jobs'. None of them look remotely like what you'd get if you simply pointed the camera and pressed the shutter, and that's often what separates an ordinary picture from a good one. Without the exposure blending that Noodle Snacks did, the sky would like be much MORE blown, and the rest of the scene would be darker. The whole point is that 'photoshop' work can actually improve a photo. It can also make it look worse when done badly, but I think you overstate the changes in edit 2 and understate what has been done in the original and edit 1. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 09:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - First, note that I've been here for quite a long time (although it's always as a sloth : on and off) so I know most of the shots are photoshopped, and I do understand they can improve the original shots (the correction of the stitching error is one more example of that). Second, I understand your point and I think the main problem is that we disagree on what really happened. You seem to think it was a almost uniformly grey overcast sky, whereas I think it's a mix of white and black clouds overcast. I've seen myself that both phenomenons may happen. So, if you think the sky was grey, then Edit 2 makes sense. If you think, as I do, that it was black and white, then Edit 2 seems like a distortion of reality and Edit 1 looks even better. Noodle seems to confirm it when he says Edit 1 is more realistic...I was actually about to change my vote to Edit 1 + correction of stitching error when you answered. Ksempac (talk) 10:02, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - It is an exposure blend. I'd say the original is most realistic (but two looks the best). The clouds were blackish towards the top and brightened near the horizon as the density was lower there. The water was very bright on the RHS of seal lake and platypus tarn too. Noodle snacks (talk) 10:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Fair enough. As I said to NS above, the intent in Edit 2 was not so much to brighten the darker clouds as to darken the lightest clouds, so that they don't look blown, and although they are not in the technical sense, I would dispute that they are absolutely accurate as I suspect that during the exposure fusion process, huge swathes of the highlights in the clouds have been flattened on the exposure curve just above blown (levels of ~245-250 where 255 is pure white). As it was a rush job, my edit also had the side effect of lowering the contrast of the darker clouds, making them lighter which as I said wasn't my intention as such. If NS says they were darker than my edit, I'll accept that, but I still think that the clouds should be visible and not disappearing into pure white (which simply doesn't happen in reality - our eyes don't see it that way). Anyway, 'nuff said. :-) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 10:22, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support - I'm not sure which version, and find some of the discussion confusing, so I don't want to say version or go beyond weak. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support original for preference, but any, really (as long as the stitching error is fixed in Edit 1): In thumbnail, this doesn't look that good! But it certainly is excellent in detail, and I appreciate the EV. I do think is there is a bit too much rock in the foreground and too much sky. I'd crop a bit top and bottom, but I'm not so set on it that I can't support as it is. Maedin\^talk 06:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support either Can't see much of a difference --Muhammad(talk) 08:46, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support original and edit 2, with preference for the original; weak support edit 1. Per nom. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 11:42, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Lake Seal Mt Field NP edit.jpg --wadester16 | Talk→ 17:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't mean to be a pain wadester, but you promoted the edit that contains the stitching fault. Everyone that supported edit 1 specifically (except Spencer who did not mention it and supported it more weakly than the others) did so on the proviso that the stitching fault was fixed (and it wasn't). On that basis, I think the original should have been promoted. Perhaps down the track, if Noodlesnacks could then incorporate a version that corrected the stitching fault in Edit 1, he could just overwrite the original file. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 07:43, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I didn't notice that. I'd guess on a pure numbers game the original had it actually. Noodle snacks (talk) 08:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm confused. You did notice it because you uploaded an edit over the top of the original with the comment "fix stitching error". I can still see what seems to be a vague seam line just below where it was fixed (I assume you did some cloning work on the horizon as it looks a bit fuzzy at that point), but other than that, it was fixed, but this fix was done after you created Edit 1, so the fix was not incorporated into that edit. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 11:24, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Nah, I was talking about wadester's closing. Noodle snacks (talk) 11:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - Oh, sorry! Well I agree. Original has it by consensus/numbers - just. The stitching fault issue just pushes it more firmly towards the original, given the work needed to fix Edit 1 probably just isn't worth bothering with. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 12:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, fixed. It's late here and I need sleep, so rather than switching out all the uses of the edit, I overwrote the edit with a copy of the original and overwrote the original with a copy of the edits. That means that the file named edit (Edit 1, which was promoted) is now actually the original. Confusing, but it was easier and all is right again with the world. wadester16 | Talk→ 05:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]