This is my first post. I signed up last week with high expectations after reading the site. I placed an order of 5 pictures. I was anxiously awaiting their arrival. When I received them today I was very disappointed in 2 out of 5 photos. They were very muddy looking. Posted is one of them. The horse and barrel look very muddy in the photo but the rider's shirt still looks white. They are lustre prints and I am used to glossy. Is this a quality of lustre and matte? I would be embarrassed to sell the photo to the rider. Any info you can give is greatly appreciated. Great forum.

Hi Kathy,

Wow, you have some great shots in that gallery.



Brings back memories of when I wanted to ride rodeo.

Here are a few things that come to mind that will help:

1. Currently, your photo is using the Adobe 98 color space, which will make your shot look washed out both during display of your photos on the web and when printing through an Internet-based printer.

Here's why: http://www.smugmug.com/help/display-color

2. In looking closely at the original pixels on the horse



you can see the effect the tough lighting had on the shot. You had to use ISO 800, which makes the Canon 10D a little grainy, and the horse has quite a bit of motion blur because it's a fast horse and the light was low enough to force the shutter speed to be on the low side (1/180).

3. You used the Tanning Salon option, which is a great option and generally produces the most pleasing skin tones, but in this case it added some yellow to a horse and barrel that it sounds like you would have preferred to have whiter.

It didn't effect the blouse much because the white areas of the blouse are blown out (which is fine), meaning the pixels are pure white.

Here's more on skin tones and the tanning salon:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone

I hope this helps.

Thanks!
Baldy