Thread: Over processed?

Took this picture recently and interested to hear if people think it's over processed and in your opinion when does a picture go beyond bold to over the top?

looks natural to me

It's posted quite small but looks quite normal to me too !

Looks fine- maybe post the original so we can see what your concern is?

My only issue is the distracting lights in the building in the background; draws my attention away from the flags. But I don't see excessive processing.

Many thanks for the feedback, my daughter thought it was too much saturation but curious - is there a way I could dim or remove the lights?
Re posted a larger image hopefully :)

It doesn't strike me as unnatural - perhaps it has more "pop" than the scene had in real life, but we can't judge that since we weren't there.

That is something I've been thinking about recently though: even if my processing doesn't make scenes unnatural, I do find myself regularly adding more "pop" to the photo than the scene had in real life. Recently I started wondering if the additional "pop" is making the photos better, or just more conforming with the current trends, and what would the consequences of no longer adding extra "pop" be for my photos' ability to keep the viewer interested and to bring my message or story across.

That's a good point, I'm careful not to oversharpen etc but always tweak the levels and curves as part of my standard post production. Personally I like it but it's only now that I thought it may be too much. I wonder if the straight out of the camera images would be well received? Maybe in terms of relevance or composition but would they lack impact to grab initial attention?

It looks perfectly fine to me, but it is small. Do you have this on your Flickr stream because if you do - why not link directly using the html code? That way we could all enjoy the flags and your photo in their full glory.

P.S. I'm sorry that I don't know what camera you're using or if you've used jpegs or enhanced the RAW file? I think we'd need to see it in a much larger version to really comment on it in detail with regard to sharpening, etc.

http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/78416848@N02/7402306586/

It was taken on a Canon G12
Raw
Program mode
1/15 sec
ISO 1600
F4. 0
Auto WB

Edited in DPP initially then PS2