Pileated Woodpecker

[Tim Harding]

My first attempt at replacing the BG. the original BG was a snow-covered stand of pines, so it ended up being OOF white blobs.

5d MkIII, Tamron 150-600 @ 375mm
1/1250 @f/6.3 ISO 800
Backyard setup

Darkened highlights and desaturated reds in LR5. Additional white recovery on head using NIK Detail Extractor. Curves layer to darken and desaturate perch. USM on bird and additional sharpening on eye.

I used the eraser tool at 10% opacity to blend the edges into the BG as well as a very slight Gaussian blur. I'm interested to hear thoughts on BG replacement (do you ever bother) and any tips or tricks.

Thanks.


149517

[Diane Miller]

Excellent! Wonderful detail on the bird! I would never have thought the BG was replaced, and this one works beautifully. There may be a hint of a dark halo around the red, probably easy to fix after all the other work. Not sure about the Eraser -- I'd use a mask as it's reversible. But maybe you meant on a mask -- the Eraser is equivalent to the black brush and it's reversed by the white brush.

I'd work on taming the red in raw conversion rather than desaturation. Try the different camera profiles to find the one with the best detail, then work on bringing up the colors. That's more successful than desaturating. Then if necessary in PS you can use Selective Color to add some Cyan and Yellow to the Reds.

[Warren Spreng]

Nice sharp image and I love the perch.

[Moe Ali]

I usually try to avoid those changes. My edited versions always end up looking a little fake, but maybe it's because I know the edit was done. Your picture looks pretty good, and I wouldn't have guessed without you mentioning it. Like Diane said, I also noticed the issue around the red head portion of the bird. But the rest looks great at this resolution.

[Tim Graham]

Hey there Tim, It's Tim! :t3 Would like to see the original w/ Bkgrd b4 replacement. I can se some definite telltale on parts of the neck, claw and body. MB alittle more detail on how you replaced the bkgrd and to what extent the editing. [ that's why the original b4 replacement would help} Thanks!
Nice shot!

[Tim Harding]

For some reason I am unable to post a file from my computer to this thread today (only from URL).

After masking the optimized bird and perch with Topaz ReMask, I dropped in a generic bokeh bg file that I keep a library of as a new layer. Copied the bird/perch layer then used eraser tool at 30% opacity and small brush size to blend the edges I saw that were obvious. Then selected the masked layer, converted the selection to a border 8px wide and applied a very slight Gaussian blur.


Hey there Tim, It's Tim! :t3 Would like to see the original w/ Bkgrd b4 replacement. I can se some definite telltale on parts of the neck, claw and body. MB a little more detail on how you replaced the bkgrd and to what extent the editing. [ that's why the original b4 replacement would help} Thanks!
Nice shot!

[Diane Miller]

Sounds like you extracted the file in ReMask as a cutout? There is an option to bring it in as a masked layer, which gives you more options for edge cleanup by tweaking the mask instead of erasing and blurring edges.

[Tim Graham]

I have to agree w/ Diane on the utilization of masks 100%. Never do destructive editing b-cuz if you change your mind you have to start ALL over again! Never used Topaz Re-Mask plug-in, I prefer to make my own from the channels of the images themselves. Replacing backgrounds and making selections is a very in-depth subject with a plethora of ways to proceed that all depend on the image at hand and what one is attempting to accomplish.

What version of PS are you running? In CS5 and newer is a great tool called refine edges that non destructively does what you've described here, for the most part.
Look into Katrin Eismann Masking & Compositing for all one needs to know about selections, it's a great place to start.

[Tim Harding]

149988

[Diane Miller]

Quite a heroic job! Except for some minor cleanup of the edges, which is quite do-able, it is a very nice image! I like the color and soft shading in the new BG.