Rejections for softness, second opinion?

Hi guys, not sure this is the right forum however I just wanted a second opinion on these two photographs, both of which were rejected for softness.

http://www.airplane-pictures.net/images/rejected-images/2012-1/182055.jpg

http://www.airplane-pictures.net/images/rejected-images/2012-1/182054.jpg

I have appealed them both but so far they languish in the appeal queue, so I thought I'd just double check on the forum incase I'm missing something. Granted, they are skyshots which are frowned upon here, however the light is nice and I had thought the quality would be good enough.

Regards,

Dave

Dave, what you have with the Syrian pic is a case of colour bleed. The saturated red did not form a good contrast on which to do a successful unsharp mask sharpen upon.

Try this. Open the image in Photoshop and bring up the Levels palate. There is a small white triangle at the bottom right of the Histogram. Hold down the Alt key and move the triangle slightly to the left.

The first thing that you will see is the red, clipped outlines, which are the cause of your troubles.

Looking at the Histogram you will also see a small spike at the extreme right, this is those clipped reds.

The Unsharp Mask method of sharpening seems to be the only way photographers sharpen images and in some case it is the wrong method, especially on over saturated colours. My own personal method is to use Lab sharpening, sharpening only the Lightness channel using the High Pass Filter method. Sharpening the tones and not the colours. (My advice to any photographer is to ditch USM, it's a curse not a cure.)

As for the Aer Lingus photo, the St.Canice and Airbus titles have been destroyed by the USM sharpening. USM boosts the local contrast between two colours, in this case the grey and the black and it has boosted it too much and destroyed the outline.

If you have the time and the willingness to learn then I would recommend this http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/sharpen1/sharpen1.htm It is the most comprehensive examination of sharpening that I have seen. Ron refers to the problem with the Aer Lingus photo as Acutance.

Thanks Wallace for the sharpening tips. I actually use ACR sharpening on the full size image followed by some selective Smart Sharpening on the resized image which I've found to be the perfect balance for me.

I actually used you're method of Lab Sharpening after reading about it on here a few months ago, however I reverted back to this method after not really noticing any difference on the finished photograph. Maybe I will have to reinvestigate it in the coming weeks.

Cheers Wallace,

Dave