Chestnut-mandibled Toucan

[vikram potdar]

COSTA RICA

Nikon D700
Lens - Nikkor 600 f/4,
ISO - 200
EV - -0.3


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[Stu Bowie]

Hi Vikram, Interesting two tone colour to the bill, and posed against a lovely smooth BG. The plumage looks a touch underexposed, and wonder if you could tease some more detail out of it. There also seems to be a greenish cast on it too.

[Stan Cunningham]

Lovely bird but I agree with Stuart on the green cast.

[Karl Egressy]

Nice pose captured, Vikram.
It could be me but it seems to me that the bird is not sharp enough especially on the head area.
I also would tone down the greens and as Stuart suggested, try to get some more details out of the dark area of the bird.

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome Vikram, This is actually a fine image that needed better processing and some tender loving care. For the repost I corrected the green cast with about a 75% average blur color balance, ran NIK Color Efex Pro Detail Extractor (with a Quick Selection Tool selection) and Tonal Contrast (via a Hide All Mask) on the bird only, did a bit of bill clean-up, and sharpened the face with a Quick Mask and a 15/65/0 contrast mask.

All as described in detail in Digital Basics (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252). You can save 15% on all NIK products (including Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, and Viveza) by following this link (http://www.birdsasart-blog.com/2012/12/24/malicious-attack/) and scrolling down.

I love the pose and the bird and the background. There seems to have been some foliage between you and the bird's tail and the face could have been a tad sharper--you may have focused on the back....

[vikram potdar]

Thanks Stuart, Stan & Karl. I agree on your observations.

Dear Arthur, thanks for the magic touch to the image.

[Arthur Morris]

Dear Arthur, thanks for the magic touch to the image.

You are welcome Vikram. I was thinking "magic" myself. But all of it is easy to learn. That's why I created "Digital Basics. (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252)"

[Arthur Morris]

PS: EV-.3 does not make much sense in soft light. Were you getting any blinkies at zero or +1/3?

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Awesome image and a lovely bird you got here , Vikram . Arthur has made it look over the top with his great PP skills . I am sure you can eke out more details with the RAW image !!

[Roger Clark]

I beautiful image with some additional processing.

I find the original too green and Artie's repost too magenta and there is a halo around the head.

Both images lack the potential detail that can be recovered with deconvolution.

Here is my try. I made some colors more neutral, some dodging, and used only curves and color balance tools in photoshop. Then I brought the image into imagesplus and ran Richardson-Lucy deconvolution with 1) 3x3 and 30 iterations then 5x5 with 3 iterations. I blended the pre-deconvolution background with the deconvolved subject and branch. Will work much better on 16-bit data, and with other setting might turn out even better. I use minimal and the very basic tools in photoshop (usually just selections and curves) and Richardson-Lucy deconvolution for most of my photo work.

Roger

[vikram potdar]

Thanks Rakesh

Roger thanks for the PP.

The colors have come out nicely but the shine on the the bird looks bit unnatural.

[Roger Clark]

Well, not having every seen one of these birds, I have no idea. What is unnatural about it? That is what is in the data, or are you saying the color balance is off?

Roger

[vikram potdar]

Hi Roger, Thanks for your efforts on PP on my Toucan image.

I mean to say that the bird diid not have the shine/glow on its black color back. The color balance is just slightly off.

Thanks.

[Arthur Morris]

Roger, please do not take this personally but the back of the bird in your repost looks plain horrible from here: pixilated and over-sharpened at best. Respectfully.

[Roger Clark]

Roger, please do not take this personally but the back of the bird in your repost looks plain horrible from here: pixilated and over-sharpened at best. Respectfully.

Hi Artie,
No, I do not take it personally. I think what you mean is posterized. In raising the level on the dark bird using the compressed jpeg, I noticed the image became quite posterized. It would be much better to work with the 16-bit image. A recent example of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution is here (see pane 15}:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/105558-Ice-bears-of-Arctic-8
Virkam, if you would like, I'll process your raw image, of a 16-bit tiff. Just email it to me.

Roger

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks for the info Roger. Image optimization will always go better when you are starting with a RAW file or a TIFF rather than a 150kb jpeg.

[vikram potdar]

Thanks Roger and Arthur Will mail RAW file.

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Vikram, Thanks again for letting me use your image in today's blog post. You can check it out here (http://www.birdsasart-blog.com/2012/12/28/chestnut-mandibled-toucan-magic/) as I added a bit of new info.