From Snorts to Licks

I can tell when Rosco is off in his room, working on his photos, which he has been doing a lot lately.

It will be quiet -- the kind of quiet that has a certain vibration or tension, absent with the calm quiet of sleep.  

Occasionally, i will hear the clicking of his paw on the mouse and then, after more silence, the <wump> <wump> <wump> of his tail hitting the back of his chair when he has done something he is pleased with.  From time to time i will hear a rough <snort>, followed by more silence, more clicks and finally the sound of tail wumping.

Every once in a while, i will hear a soft thud and the padding of paws followed by <slurpa><slurpa><slurpa> more  paw padding and a scramble noise as he jumps back into his chair.  

Dog at Work.

And so i was a little taken aback tonight when these normal work sounds were suddenly punctuated with <snort> ... <s n o r t> ... <S N O R T>  

Oh ... oh...

I looked over and there was Rosco at the door looking consternated... sitting with his tail very flat on the floor. 

"What's wrong, Roski?"

<Stare> 

"Ok, wait-a-minute, I'll come look."

<Stare>

When i got to the computer, Rosco explained that he wanted to post the picture he had taken a couple of weeks ago of Mt. Baker as seen across the swamp at Hovander Park.  

Rosco said, that from the look of camera's JPG, he did not think it would need much adjusting.  Even so, he converted it to DNG and then called it up in the new toy.   As is usually the case, the raw file was a tad flat but Rosco was confident that would fix itself once the file's values were saved.

He fiddled with temptint and exposure mainly to confirm that no adjustments were needed.  To add a little pizzaz he adjusted clarity and vibrance to contrast and saturate the mid tones a bit.  At first he set them a quarter of a way up at +27, but then decided that was too much.

"You thought it looked too tutti frutti" I asked?  Rosco said he did, adding that he thought it did not take much to make a photo look too color rich.  And so he adjusted the clarity and vibrance down to 20 and 13.  

"So why the snorting?" I asked, "it looks good to me...." 

"Because," Rosco said with a tone of exasperated annoyance, "once i had gotten it all done, and put my pawmark on it, i compared it to the camera's jpg and the jpg was better!  That's not supposed to be," he said, almost snorting again.

"Let me see."

I compared Rosco's finished product with the camera's jpg, angling my view at the screen this way and that.  Sure enough the jpg was better, by a hair, but noticeable all the same.

The rushes at the lower left, were a tad more radiant, the over-hanging leaves just a bit more crisp, and the snow-ridges on Mt. Baker more contrasted. 

"Hmmmm.... i see what you mean."

Rosco gave me a hopeless look.

"But on the other paw, the dry grass is richer and the sky just a hair bluer on your version," i said looking at the bright side, so to speak.

Rosco ignored my positivity. "And worst of all," he groused, "once i reduced it in size, the bridge over the water was hardly visible...."

Okay Roski, i said, this is what we're going to do. First of we're going to use your adjustments because they were well taken and the losses you see are very very small. 

I could tell Rosco relaxed a bit.

As for the bridge, we're going to save the picture at a lower resolution but with larger dimensions.  We've been doing it just the reverse, but this is a time when detail is a function of dimension rather than pixel density...

Rosco looked dubiously

"...and on screen," i continued, "you really don't see the added pixel depth." 

"No?"  

"No."  And I showed him. 

So with that... Rosco felt much better and went to go lick himself as I finished up for him.

=======

Two years later, I heard Rosco pawing through his photage and then suddenly let out a howl yelp as if someone had stepped on his paw.

He came into my room with a foto in his maw and dropped it by my feet.  Then he looked up in that way dogs do when they blame and need you at the same time.

I picked up the foto and grimmaced.   I did that?  <stare>

Rosco insisted that I help him re work it... which we did.