Peacock

Peacock, originally uploaded by hermanau.

I went to the Arcadia Arboretum with Bernard on Saturday. It's such a beautiful place, way better than that garden we visited last week. There are birds roaming around everywhere, a well kept green house, although the waterfall was turned off... But it really paid off when we spotted this peacock fanning its plumage for us. It was really quite a show of this one of nature's most fascinating beautiful bird.

1000+ Views, 100+ Faves!

Endless Tranqulity, originally uploaded by hermanau.

My first ever 1000+ views 100+ favorites shot... :-) This shot really kinda surprised me when I developed it from the NEF file 'cause it almost came out like this exactly. I didn't add any colors to it whatsoever. The only thing I did to it was sharpening, contrast, and noise reduction. Thank you for all the support, and hopefully I'll have a 2nd shot that reaches this benchmark soon. :-)

Waterfall

Untitled, originally uploaded by hermanau.

My first waterfall shot ever. I've always wanted to shoot these, but I never come across one. This one wasn't shot in the ideal angle 'cause the plants were in the way, and also I didn't have my tripod with me. This one was shot at F/22 with a polarizer 1/3sec shutter, and holding the camera resting it against some hand rails. This really isn't the best, but I guess not too bad for the first time. :-)

FixNEF, yes seriously, Fix your NEF!

Huge props to Jaewook Chung writing both programs... this one is probably even better than PreviewExtractor of the previous post. Wow, even taken those pictures that the WB is so messed up that you would have to spend an hour in PS just trying to correct it and eventually fail? Now this tool is here to the rescue... It appears to have a smarter algorithm in correcting white balance, and it modifies your NEF (RAW) file so that you wouldn't have to deal with jpeg loss. The only downside to it? You need Nikon Capture to use in conjunction with it in order to obtain the values you need. Also, too bad it doesn't support my old D50... :P D70, D2X owners, whee! Download the tool here.

Shutter Count - Nikon

Most of you should already know that the life of your DSLR is closely tied to the shutter count. Although there hasn't been any confirmed number of counts on how many times a shutter would fail, but it should give you an idea what the "mileage" is on your camera. It's especially helpful if you were to purchase a pre-owned unit.

I came across this one today for Nikon and I find it doing just that... the shutter count on my D50 actually surprised me at 8367. The D70 I just purchased from a friend is sitting at 7373. On top of that neat feature, it also extracts the largest Jpeg file from your NEF files, and it supports batch operation! Wow! Anyway, here's the link to download yours. :)

Bugeye WRX Wagon

02 Subaru Impreza WRX, originally uploaded by hermanau.

Alright, I'm trying some a little different on this shot. I actually took 7 shots of different exposure on this but I only used 4 of them. Instead of using a wide range of exposure to get a perfectly exposed shot all over, I actually managed to control the "feel" of the image and re-create the lighting environment, but dramatically enhance the feel of it to create this surreal dramatic lighted parking lot look. I actually like this shot the most out of all the HDRs I've made so far. It looks HDR'ish, but you'll question your eyes, and the lines that are usually quite subtle on the car is showing themselves with pride. :")

Tutorial: Adobe Photoshop basics - Levels

I browse about 100-400 pictures / day on flickr, and I notice a lot of pictures out there are underexposed or overexposed. The truth is, if a picture is overexposed, there really isn't much you can do to save it; but if it's underexposed, you have a pretty good chance of saving it. To understand this, you have to understand how your digital sensor works. It works much like film in this case: When there's too much light exposed to your sensor for too long, it exceeds its capability to pick up any color information, and as a result, it turns into 100% white. We call that a blown-out spot. There are times when it is intentional to leave some spots blown-out in order to allow proper exposure to happen in other areas in a picture, but in general it is not desirable. If you shoot in RAW format, you still have a chance to adjust it when you process the picture. But before I lose you, let's go back to the subject and talk about underexposure.

Below is a typical underexposed picture, but not by far. It's not a subjective thing, but is actually factual that you can see from the levels histogram as shown below:


Notice the histogram does not stretch all the way to the end, but rather lies from left to right about 65% of the way. In order to fix this and properly expose this picture, you should theoretically slide the right arrow to the end of the histogram, thus telling your photo editing program that the brightest spot of the picture is... right there (where the red arrow shows). Let's put it in a different way so you understand this better: You're basically telling the program that you want to discard anything on the right of the histogram, in this case almost nothing, and use where that arrow points as the brightest spot in the picture.

Before we move on, look at the picture once again, and notice the teeth of the beautiful lady in the picture is unfortunately blown-out! Right... you just told the picture to set the brightest spot, and hey Herman you messed up the picture! Ahem... that's why I said theoretically earlier! In most cases you should do that, but in this image, nope! The image was shot with a pretty strong light source somewhat facing the lady's face, and her teeth unfortunately caught more light than the rest of the face, and it became the brightest spot in the image. Sure there are a lot of ways to fix this, but let's stay with the basics this time. What we're going to do here is to ease up the earlier adjustment to what's shown below:



Ahha! better... the face looks more natural, although not perfectly exposed. Now that you know that you have definitely improved the image, but not exposed it perfectly just yet. We're going to try the curves tool to bring up a little bit more light around the mid-tones, while leaving the brightest spots (the teeth, for example) alone. Look at the image below again:



Yay it's coming along... but it looks too bright again, particularly in the facial area. Correct, and this is how we're going to fix this final part of the image. We're going to tell the program that we want this effect that we just did, but only apply it fully at the bottom of the screen, and gradually blend into almost no adjustment towards the top of the head, in a sense that the face wouldn't catch too much of the ill-effect we just did. What we'll do is to click on the mask of the adjustment layer we just did, and draw a gradient from lower right to upper left in white to black seen below:



Tada! That's it and we're done! Before you quickly save it and upload it to flickr, please listen to me before you wrap it up. Remember you're trying to enhance the image, not alter it dramatically here. Your adjustments MUST be gradual in order to maintain subtleness. Remember you don't want to be seen over-adjusting, and you want to always go back and forth to compare the before and after picture and see if you really improved it, or if you actually made it worse! Here's a quick comparison of the before and after shot.



Recap: We used the levels tool to better expose the shot, then we used the curves tool to bring out the mid-tones, and finally used a layer mask to mask off some of the effects of the curves tool to avoid making the face too bright. Questions, suggestions, feel free to exercise your freedom of speech! ;-)


Credits: Big thanks to .Hortencia.Caires. on Flickr for allowing me to use her beautiful picture as an example here!

Additional notes: A reader asked me to explain further about the histogram on Efania and I decided to post it here too:


I'm glad you asked because I was afraid I'll lose most readers if I explained too much in depth. The x-axis of the histogram represents from left to right, complete darkness to complete brightness. The y-axis represents the amount of pixels. in this example it's showing RGB meaning Red/Green/Blue channel, but since this is a b/w image it's only representing luminance, or the amount of light.



In this above example, translating into plain English:
There's a lot of complete darkness, mostly in her clothings in the lower right of the full image, some in the hair. At around 25% to 50% of the x-axis we've got quite a bit of information too, representing the darker gray tones of the picture: part of her face, her arms, the background; the rest of the information from 50% to 75% or so which has only quite a few pixels the bright part of her face; and finally there are no pixels from 75%-100% brightness int he image, meaning it's under exposed. But in reality, since we want to avoid properly exposing the entire image resulting in the teeth overexposing, we resorted to using the curves and a layer mask to selectively bring out more details of the significant part of the image and leaving the original feel of lighting intact.

Hope I explained this better this time... :-)

Afterwods: If I were adjusting this image myself, I would probably try to isolate the teeth and part of her forehead using a layer mask made in combination of magic wand, gaussian blur, paint brush / quick mask to make it closer to perfect. But we'll probably save it for later... :-)

Paint.NET, a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop

I've been flickr'ing too much lately, and started coming across a lot of pictures that are underexposed. We live in a digital world, and underexposed pictures can be saved a lot of times. Although the vast majority of people out there who owns a digital camera, only a hand full of them own Photoshop or have enough knowledge to use it to their advantage. I came across a so-called alternative recently called Paint.NET. It's a free image editing program and photo manipulation program that contains much of the core features you need for easy adjustments, and all those tools that are better than your silly MS Paint that belongs to the museum.

I was going to start writing some of my tutorials about fixing photos with common problems based on it, but after spending some time with it... I find it missing way too much features even the earlier versions of Adobe Photoshop offers. Honestly, I can't live without things like layer masks... transparency, different brushes and pressure... but then again, to be honestly with you, it's a pretty darn good program if you're looking for something FREE to replace your MS Paint. :-) Give it a shot if you don't have Photoshop or similar programs!

BMW 330i

Shirley's BMW 330i, originally uploaded by hermanau.

My 2nd HDR attempt. This time I talked to my friend to get his advice to clean up most of the distracting visual elements before uploading the final version. I'm confident that this is really really close to getting my HDR the right feel. I don't want my HDRs to scream out loud that they're HDR and want attention. I want to stay low right below the line where people will notice it's HDR... so here you go ;-)

Nikon 55-200 mm F/4 5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor Lens w/ Vibration Reduction

I don't know how I missed this one when it was released in March, 2007... but I just got to post it for those who are slow to react like myself... 2 words: GET IT!!!!!!

This is the very first VR lens ever priced at the budget consumer's level. I thought it was April's Fool, but no it's seriously priced at $249.99! Expect plastic construction all over like the Nikkor kit lens, but I'm pretty sure you'll find the Nikon quality and the VR-II technology will definitely be worth it. I guess I'll have to postpone my plans on my ultra-wide angle lens again... :-)

Found it at wolfe's camera right here... gosh why am I not getting commission?
Nikon's website about the lens

HDR Tutorial with Photomatix and Photoshop

Forewords: I hated HDR. Why am I even bothering with it and writing this? It's only because there are too many that really give HDR a bad name, and I finally got around and decided to learn how to do it well myself. I'm not claiming to be an expert in this and I'm only sharing what I've learned so far.

Preparation: First off, you need an HDR software to make HDR shots. There are lots of HDR softwares out there on the market, and Photomatix is a popular choice and is what I used in mine. I believe Photoshop CS and above has the HDR feature if you already have a copy. Second of all, you need a tripod. This is very important because in order to generate a good HDR you'll need multiple shots of different exposure. You can generate HDR with 1 picture, but you wouldn't get a very good one and take the most advantage of it.

Before you start, you may consider briefly reading what HDR is really all about, what the results should look like, and what you want to achieve before you proceed. Here's a pretty good site for your reference: Cambridge in Colour


Step 1: Taking the shot:
First off, identify your subject. Find something with a wide variety of range in lighting. e.g. sunset silhouette; shooting from inside a building with windows in the middle of the day; parking lot at night. Also, make sure you find something that stays still and does not move. Set up your tripod, and then you'll be off to take multiple images. You can either use the bracketing feature of your camera, and if it's not available, manually take multiple shots of the same white balance, aperture, but vary the exposure. I did mine using different shutter speed in Manual mode shown above.



Take at least 3 shots, and review your shots. For best results, make sure your different shots cover a wide range of exposure of different parts of the picture.

Step 2: HDR processing:
This tutorial is not meant to give you a step by step tutorial on how to use your HDR software, and thus I'll try to cover the broader basics of what you'll encounter and prepare you with the information you need to get it done.

Open up your HDR software, and use it to open up all the images you have taken. Follow the instructions and start generating your HDR! (For Photomatix users, Click HDRI, -> Generate HDR).
When you're done, you'll see something like the following picture, YUCK!


Don't be discouraged yet like I was... :-) We're just beginning and this is only a part of the process. Review the image, and check for ghosting effects or visual blemishes. If you spot ghosting, chances are your camera moved when you're shooting, or your shots need to be aligned. In that case, you may have to go back to step 1 or try the aligning image feature of your software if it's available.

Step 3: Tone Mapping:
In Photomatix you'll see that little window hovering, and that's a preview window of what it could look like when you adjust it properly. The large preview window is only giving you an idea of the range of the image, and by no means it is going to be the final product. Then, go to HDRI -> Tone Mapping and adjust the settings to your preference. Experiment with the settings to your liking, but make sure you don't go too extreme here. You want to enhance the picture instead of generating a plastic wrapped 3D'ish looking piece of duno-what-you-call-it like a lot of those HDR-wannabes out there. This is where I can't really share much with you at this point because I'm not exactly an expert. But I'm sure you'll find a ton of reference out there that will assist you in this process. This is a process with many different approaches, and you'll have to master this if you ever wanted to get your HDRs right.

When you're done in this step, you'll be having an HDR image (yay!), but we're not done yet (duh!). Think of it this way, your HDR is like a RAW file that contains much more information about each pixel than necessary to dispaly on your monitor. Why? That's because when you're done, you'll be converting this 24-bit or even 48-bit HDR image back into an 8-bit LDR format, discarding the unused information. Save your image in 48-bit format to retain all the information you have created in the process in TIFF.

If you're a Photoshop user, you may skip the tone mapping in your HDR software and covert the HDR image into LDR in here. In that case, you'll notice a lot of tools normally available to you in Photoshop or the photo editor of your choice are missing when you open the 48-bit TIFF. You'll have to change it back to an 8-bit or 16-bit image before you can regain all the tools.

This is the step a lot of people skip, and fail miserably in their HDR resulting in a flat, overexposed, plastic wrapped like image. I can't stress enough in my tutorials about this, but remember you're trying to enhance the image instead of trying to create something from scratch when you retouch an image. HDR is no different from any photo retouching process, and could be very destructive if you go overboard.

Step 4: Post Processing:
Now, open up your newly generated HDR image with your editor (Photoshop, in my example). What I tried to do here with my image is to #1 reduce the color over saturation, #2 bring back some of the contrast lost in the process. See the image below:



I've applied Levels to first correctly expose the image, stretching the sliders on both ends to the histogram. Then I applied 2 different curves to the image to adjust the contrast of the image, and to bring out the details I wanted. Finally, adjusted the saturation down by a lot, yes a LOT... saturation makes beautiful colors, but over saturation results in loss of range of color and can be very destructive also. The results... you be the judge. :-)


Final Result



Another recent shot... Better looking? ;")


Finally, I have a few tip for you all if you are new to making better HDR shots:

1. An masterfully processed HDR shot would be a piece of crap if the shot itself is bad. Keep that in mind and watch your composition, focus, sharpness, noise, angle, etc.
2. Know what HDR does for you, and use it to your advantage; not to your disadvantage. HDR stands for high dynamic range, and it's basically stacking the same image of different exposures in order to better achieve the ideal exposure that cannot be captured in one single shot. Before you run outside holding your camera, think in your head what would be underexposed and overexposed if you shoot there, that time of the day. There are good times, locations, and lighting environment where HDR truly shines.
3. Bright daylight where pretty much everything in your frame other than your wheels and your undercarriage is brightly lit has minimal for you to enhance.
   tip: Night shots with multiple light source results in amazing results if done right.
4. Shoot RAW. Don't argue with this one... just do it.
5. Shoot with a tripod, always. If you're serious about photography, invest in a better tripod and spend at least $150 or more for a decent one.
6. Color balance is extremely important in HDR. Make sure you don't end up with multiple shots of different color balance and end up with a weird image.
7. Shooting the image, combining them in PS/Photomatix, etc, and Tone Mapping is only HALF WAY OF THE PROCESS! I'M SERIOUS. You should spend at least the equal amount of time or MORE in post processing to finish editing the image. The unbelievably great looking HDR images you see do not come out straight from just Tone Mapping.
8. Last but not least, always go back and compare it with the original shot, and I mean it. The HDR process is not supposed to create a silly halo effect that looks plastic paint. It's a treatment to achieve the ultimate surreal exposure that not even our amazing human eyes could do. Make sure your treatment and post processing is doing something constructive, instead of making it worse than it originally looked before the process.

Hope it helps.







hdr

My first HDR

Subaru WRX, originally uploaded by hermanau.

Finally got around to get my first ever successful HDR shot. I stopped by the parking lot of a close by theatre at night a couple days ago and took a series of shots including this one which I got 4 exposures. I've been trying different HDR techniques and failed miserably using Photoshop to create this type of shots. This time I read an article explaining the process in depth and clearly showed why the shot would turn out to be out of whack during the process. I just kinda closed my eyes and just ran past that obstacle and finally went back to Photoshop to recreate that original type of lighting back into the picture so that it's got a breathe of life instead of looking like a 3D image that looks over exposed. Oh and also the saturation was toned down by about 40!!! Tell me what you think... *smile*

Fun projects with Photography Tutorial

I stumbled across popphoto.com today and found a few interesting tutorial articles teaching how to shoot numerous fun subjects and have tips that will really help amateurs and intermediate photographers who have not been exposed to those areas.

I've picked a few to list here:

• How to shoot smoke
• How to shoot star Streaks
• How to use a Second Flash
• How to create HDR Images
  

Subaru WRX Wagon

Subaru WRX Wagon, originally uploaded by hermanau.

My first night parking lot shot. I've always wanted to try these but I don't have wide angle lens, and so I tried a few with my widest 28mm. That kinda limited myself to what I could shoot, but i'm quite pleased with the results. If you want to attempt this type of shot, make absolutely sure you have at least a half decent tripod, that would save you a world of headaches. If you don't have a remote or shutter cord, you could do what I did using a self timer. I set the timer to 2 seconds so i wouldn't have to keep waiting for 10 seconds for it to shoot.

Beauty is in the Eye

Beauty is in the Eye, originally uploaded by hermanau.

My very first eye shot. Took me less than 10 tries to get this right. Next time I'll try to get a more interesting subject in the reflection.. :-)

If you're interested in doing a shot like this, here's a brief tutorial to what I've done to get this shot:

1. Make sure you have a reliable light source at your disposal, I used a SB600 flash to bounce this off of the direction where my model was looking, and that definitely made the reflection bright and clear.
   
2. Macro lens or macro extension tube is a must here. A point and shoot camera wouldn't let you get *that* much details and *that* close *that* sharp
3. Manual focus, yes you need it. To nail it perfectly you may have to try it many times because most of the time autofocus will lock on the eye lashes; try the auto focus to manual focus fine tune technique here.
4. Trial and error, rinse and repeat until you get it right.
5. Post-editing is a subjective personal preference here. It really depends on the reflection, color, and it's shot. To me, less is almost always more, and honestly I would probably have prefered a black & white treatment all the way. However, the deep brown color is naturally beautiful like a piece of jewel, and thus I couldn't resist. All I did was masking the b/w layer. That's it!
   

Domokun Attacks!!!

Domokun Attacks!!!, originally uploaded by hermanau.

Hehe, here's another one of those Photoshop "accidents" where I just let my imagination run wild. Pictured is Domokun attacking a miniature Seattle (shot this actually when I went to Seattle a couple months ago). So, here you go Domokun fans! Enjoy

ISO 1600 with my Nikon D50

I've learned to stay away from anything above ISO 400 at all costs over the past by all means because of mainly the noise. Shooting with a DSLR, getting better lens, and all other supporting equipment usually does 2 things: 1) get a sharper shot, 2) get a cleaning shot with better optical quality; Using ISO 800 or 1600 with the D50 is guaranteed to produce an visible noise, and often times sacrifice a lot of quality.

A while ago, I found myself completely lost when I reviewed my precious shots. I felt that I was paying too much attention to get the shots "right", and slowly I completely forgot the reasons behind shooting. I came to conclusion that photography isn't always about producing that picture perfect poster image. Photography can be a lot of different things, meaning it may be a medium for an artist to express a message; it may be a medium for the scientific mind to capture what our eyes could not see; it may be a visual record for a journalist to share with others what they witnessed, etc. I stuck my head simply too deep into trying to figure out how to better use the camera equipment, but completely ignored all the other elements. The most important of all, afterall it's all about framing an image into a frame of your choice, the photographer has the freedom to design what's in the frame, how it's framed. Light, color, contrast, brightness, different effects, treatment, these are simply different elements a photographer can control in order to achieve the goal, and that shouldn't be using the equipment, but rather getting that picture that the photographer has in mind that he wanted to paint of what he sees.

Sure using ISO 1600 you wouldn't be able to get that perfectly sharp picture, but heck taking pictures isn't always just about getting it sharp, getting it crisp! You can still capture the mood, the atmosphere, the moment, sometimes way better than a clean picture! :) The picture shown here was taken in restaurant at the dining table, it's a dimly lit place and the flash would have completely destroyed the mood. Sure there's noise, and sure it's not the perfectly clean, visually stunning picture, but you can't complain about the smile, the action, and the atmosphere that's completely intact in the picture. ;)

I'm losing myself again mostly because it's 2am... and I think I've already lost most of you... I'm sure I'll come across another crossroad again, and I'll be back writing about this again. :)

Candid Photography

I just happened to stumble across the term Candid Photography today over Wikipedia: link while I was trying to figure out the proper terminologies and classifications of photography. I feel that I'm seriously lacking knowledge of this area, and it's about time I gather my attention together and actually start reading to fill the gaps of all my new found knowledge. By definition, it's the art form of unstaged photography while capturing the scene, the story, or the event, or even the beauty of that moment. It appears that Candid Photography is something that I've enjoyed doing over the years with my P&S cameras while I enjoy capturing the "behind the scene" type of shots, or pictures that tell a story in gatherings and parties. Doing it with a DSLR is an entirely different story because there are so much more to think about when using it. The priority of shooting candid shots shift from technical to capturing the moment, the mood, the story, the beauty of the instance that would never be the same again. It's something that requires you to bring out your artistic touch and your eye for the right subject, angle, and be able to adjust immediately to get it right.

More on this subject later.. :)

FREE Lens Hood

The best word of the Internet is, without a doubt, FREE

I was cleaning up my emails earlier and found this great site for the fellow photographers who may want a Free lens hood, printed directly from your own printer. Sure they're made of paper and aren't as durable as the real thing, but it's FREE comparing to spending $40-$50 for a piece of plastic that occupies space in your camera bag. I'm sure we can all save a little money for that other lens on our list... ;-)

Oh, and here's the link to your FREE paper lens hood. :-)

My Flickr pictures for the past few months

Flickr Toys treated all pictures of everybody on flickr as if they're shown on Explore, and here's a little piece of glory that reflects the pictures I've taken over the past few months. Link to my Flickr account here: Herman Au



1. Light and Shade of Yellow, 2. Ripple, 3. Contrasting Personalities, 4. Symmetrical Illusion, 5. The wait, 6. The art of learning, 7. Color in darkness, 8. Two halves of a Heart,

9. Pink Rannuculus, 10. The Fading Memories, 11. Endless Tranqulity, 12. Path of Light, 13. 桜 Sakura, 14. Nature's Kiss, 15. Court of Heaven, 16. Friendship and Happiness,

17. Innocence, 18. Pasadena City Hall, 19. Golden Sunset, 20. Water droplet 1, 21. The Blue Ring, 22. Path of Brightness, 23. Homemade Cappuccino, 24. Water Droplet 5,

25. Curious CC, 26. The Art of Subtlety, 27. Cherry Blossom in March, 28. No Subject, 29. a Touch of Spring, 30. Commitment, 31. Unabandoned, 32. Catching Time,

33. Exploring Reflection, 34. Izumi's Amaebi Miso Soup, 35. Honey, what's that coming at us?, 36. WRX wagon, 37. Entranced, 38. Lions Gate Bridge, 39. Sunset at Balboa Island, 40. Our First,

41. Tranquil, 42. Crush!, 43. Discovering Myself, 44. Domokun Attacks!!!, 45. Sunset at Balboa Island, 46. Gold Rush, 47. Curious Squirrel?, 48. If the new mini came out 40 years ago...,

49. CC: "Leave me alone...", 50. Drift.., 51. Water Droplet 3, 52. Seperated, 53. Mixed Satay 沙嗲 (chicken/beef/pork), 54. Artificial Nature, 55. Little Squirrel..., 56. Heroes at rest,

57. Afternoon Starbucks coffee at home, 58. After hours at the Barber Shop, 59. Mission Arches, 60. Hear me Whisper, 61. Reaching for the Stars, 62. Bus #7645, 63. Behind the Gorgeous Sun, 64. Chinese Turnip Cake (蘿蔔糕),

65. Gigantic Takoyaki!, 66. Kéan Coffee, 67. CC waiting for food, 68. CC's typical Day #2, 69. Wooden Bridge in Spring, 70. Taste, Luxury, Humor?, 71. Another afternoon Seattle coffee, 72. Izumi's Tai & Suzuki

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

2008 Subaru Impreza WRX

MotorTrend has revealed new images of the 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX and shocked the world. In merely one week, there has been 267,853 posts since the initial post date of 3/26 on the thread on nasioc.com, one of the biggest Subaru sites of North America. The news is so shocking mainly because of the tremendous disappointment in the design. Not only is it not ground breaking, it looks remarkably like the Mazda-3 in various angles and it's probably the least aggressive Impreza WRX to date. Comparing to the Mitsubishi Concept X design that seemingly is going to translate pretty well into production, this design is simply unforgivably horrible.

The one thing that absolutely needs to go is the grill design. Remember when the current Impreza design was released, it took the public quite a while to get used to the new nose design that was supposed to become a new corporate face of Subaru, somehow they seem to be changing their minds again. The hatch/wagon design in the MotorTrend illustration shown above, is showing that the fender lines that the wagon owners have been dying for all these years, is again missing. The entire car has boring lines, and the overall shape looks nothing more than a simple revamp of the current design with some DNA of the Mazda-3 in the mix.

At this point, all we can hope for is that these images are again another Internet hoax or it's an April fool joke.

Disclaimer: Image shown above is a repost of a scan of MotorTrend.
Note: You can track the results of a poll on nasioc.com about how badly received the design has been here. As of right now over 72% people are saying Nay to it.