Autumn textures - repost added

I took this last October while contest shooting. My main subject had been a butte beyond this image. Before getting back in the car I noticed it had some great colors/layers and textures so took a few shots. I burned the BG cottonwoods slightly to give more depth. I posted this in ESS but would love to know what the RM guys think too.

Thanks!

Pam

This is clearly suffering from jpeg compression, due to all the intricate detail, but that doesn't prevent anyone from recognizing this as a beautiful study in textures and subtle color. This is really nice, Pam. Steve Weaver would be proud.

I love subtle images like this, Pam. I agree with Todd about the jpeg compression. Not sure how you resized/sharpened, but you might have a look at Marc Adamus web sharpening technique.
Paul

I agree regarding the oversharpening or compression - whatever... However, as-is, I think it's a very cool abstract - almost painterly - effect. Nice.

Ken

Thanks guys. The original size version has just the right amount of sharpness. I had to reduce this to 50 to get in under the 200kb size limit. So I think the culprit here is compression. Paul, I did ultimately use Marc's technique here. Glad y'all like it.

Pam

Pam, ive been using Marcs technique on my posts for about a year now, and ive found it works well 90% of the time, but not on high detail shots like this (although if you go up to about 1200+ pixels for the pre-sharpen phase it helps). For these shots, id suggest very careful USM, and/or using a luminosity mask/layer at 55-60% opacity for the shapening.
As you said, compression is a tough problem here.

This is a really tough one to sharpen for web. It either looks too sharp or not enough. Still have to reduce by half to get the size the forum wants. This repost used USM only after resizing and a 4 x 5 crop as a few suggested on ESS. Any better? I think it's fuzzy. Thanks for your thoughts.

Pam

This is a nice shot. I do agree that the first one seemed oversharpened. The 2nd one looks better but it does seem a tad soft. This might be one where you have to oversharpen it a tad, then use a mask to reduce the sharpening in the parts of the image that seem oversharpened. Also, maybe try saving it as a higher quality jpeg. I'm not sure if I like the first image or the cropped image better. Both work for me.

i like the composition and the colors represented, perhaps file size limitation is hurting this posting, good image