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Hello, I am new in Photography but have gotten heavily into it. I take photo's daily as much as possible and spend a great deal of time learning how to post process the photo's in Photoshop better and learning the in's and out's of the program. I'm left with a few questions after going through countless other photo's from good photographers. First, I notice their photo's are crystal clear and usually devoid of noise. I've tried using reduce noise to reduce the noise in my photo's, as well as using a small surface blur, and even tried using a second layer with the image on top of the first layer as overlay or screen to increase contrast. I've tried using high pass also. While those things seem to work to a minor degree (Nomatter what I put the settings to) the images don't turn out like what I see with the professionals. While they look nice, if zoomed in to max resolution you see issues. If I use reduce noise or blur to fix the noise, it becomes too blurry. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge to shoot photo's, using pro mode so that I have as much control as possible and even doing zoom manually to get the sharpest picture possible. I have the ISO setting at 50 or 100, sometimes 200 if it's dark. I realize shooting with a high ISO will cause noise so I keep it as low as possible and try to shoot in well lit area's. I adjust the shutter speed to allow only as much light as necessary to avoid blurry pictures, and in the settings I tell the camera to save the raw dng files so that I have more to work with post processing. I realize I need a better camera, but I don't have enough money at the moment to upgrade. I was hoping to make money with what I have so that I could buy a professional DSLR camera. So, the questions I have for you guys are: 1.) What is the best entry level camera? I don't have a lot of money to spend, but I need something better than this Smartphone I imagine. I've read the best entry level is the Nikon D3300 or D3400. 2.) How much better is an entry level DSLR over a Galaxy S6 Edge? Will the photo quality improve greatly? 3.) What kind of post processing in Photoshop do you normally do to make images look their best? Are there any good tips on making images crisp/clear and noise/artifact free? Thank you in advance for your help!

Hi Fellow Photographers ... I saw that another patron posted a photo that was rejected and he received lots of great input on how to improve his own QC process. I recently uploaded a photograph I took from a trip to Pompeii. It was one of the Pompeii dogs. I felt the image had excellent quality. The picture was taken with a Canon T6s; ISO 250; 1/200 sec. f/5.6 135mm; file size of 16.3 MB; with a resolution of 6000 x 4000 uncropped or enhanced. The image of the dog and surrounding grass is so clear you can see the individual hairs on the dog, the red stitching on the collar, and the grass seed heads at the feet of the dog, which are crisp and clear. The background of the road and surrounding grass are blurred on purpose. Any feedback you can provide would be greatly appreciated. This was the only image I uploaded and I am at a total loss as to how to evaluate my own images at this point. It was rejected as "soft or lacking detail."