I am one who tends to go against the grain and enjoy the Topaz / grunge kind of look more than most - at least I don't automatically hate them the way some seem to. I think too much and it doesn't work, and too little and it comes off as just noisy shots. You have a good balance here and I like the treatment as an option for potential buyers. If it were me, I might try to back off the color a little and go grungier if that's even a real word, more of a sepia type toning. But overall I enjoy this kind of different processing... although it definitely is a matter of personal opinion.
These look like great shots without the treatment too... and I know I've seen some of them. Nice stuff.
I really like the look, probably would side with not grungy enough. Maybe it's the jersey that's throwing me off, seems too new or bright. I agree with dj, maybe back off the color. I like the look of the darker face in 1, the rest of the faces seem too bright. I do like the look though.
ishootsport3, DJ, Steven, Mike - Thank you all for checking these out and for your feedback. I really appreciate your time and thoughts.
As I mentioned in the original post, these pictures were created using a Lightroom Preset. The preset was not downloaded, but rather I followed a "recipe" within Lightroom and then saved the preset which I applied to the photos.
The recipe called for -80 saturation and around -.33 decrease in exposure.
Your feedback mostly centered on the saturation (too much color) and the under exposure, so I reduced the saturation to -90 and brought the exposure back to 0.0
(Steven, I hear you about the noise. For expedience sake, I have not tackled the noise issue per say. I did boost the noise reduction in Lightroom (which I do not find to be great) a little, but probably need to to more work using Noiseware before applying the preset)
Here are the same five pictures with the changes. What to you think now?
I like them, it's almost a different style though. I might try boosting saturation on just one color, maybe the blue. Definitely like the first one better
