I forgot to add something about your remark on saturation, Melbob: I finish all my images for uploading in Photoshop and use always a color-calibrated computer screen. Nevertheless: I then see quite different colors of my own images when accessing them here (though the uploaded versions' color-profile is at all times sRGB): they look a bit subdued with Firefox, oversaturated with Safari (both always on a Mac, of course) which makes me wonder how *you* all see *my* pictures. This image here is a very good example for that phenomenon. Has anyone else experienced this inconsistency?? -- db.
Melbob: You are absolutely right; I often use USM for challenge-entries somewhat more aggressively than I would for any other purpose. But that makes things even worse: the more you sharpen, the more you then have to compress a jpg to get it below the 150kb limit! I always thought 250kb might be a good compromise, saving pbase-space on one hand and--on the other--allowing to maintain, nevertheless, a good image quality for most entries; but for some reason many of the habitués here seem to be afraid of claiming that tad more server capacity for us. :-(
Penny: I do appreciate your commenting on all three of my entries: Thank you!
Nice Daniel and I do understand the point you make. It is often that some detail gets lost in the compression, such a pity.
I notice that often I need to apply a little more USM and contrast/saturation to images at this level for posting here that would just not be accepted for a 'stock image'.