Butterfly

[Joanna Trescott]

I hope this is the right forum...I took this in The Butterfly Pavillion. Canon 20D, 1/200 @ 5.6. ISO 800. 250mm with 100-400mm lens. I don't like the hot leaf, but burning it did not work. Any suggestions?

[Chris Starbuck]

Joanna,
I couldn't resist the challenge (I have entirely too much time on my hands at the moment:)).

Here's what I ended up with, after a couple dead ends. Obviously lots of steps can be adjusted to taste, but I think there's maybe the beginnings of a general approach here for dealing with blown highlights in localized (reasonably selectable) areas.

1. duplicate image layer
2. select leaf (the whole leaf, very carefully, with a small feather ~3 pixels), save selection for later
3. eyedropper > sample mid-dark green from upper surface of leaf, toward right edge
4. add a solid color fill layer with the sampled color
5. load the previously saved selection, add layer mask (selection becomes the mask)
6. set blending mode to hard light, opacity ~50%
7. create a merged layer for burning, blending mode = luminosity
8. now that the leaf highlights aren't white, burn highlights w/ exposure <20% (for finer control),
then back off opacity to taste (I thought ~50% looked best)

Chris

[Julie Kenward]

This is too funny...I went in another direction. The only part I didn't like about this was the white spot at the bottom. I set the clone tool to "color" and 100% opacity and cloned the green from the upper left down to fill the white spot on the bottom. Then, I ran noise reduction...you've got quite a bit of it from what I can tell. Did you do a large crop?

It's a beautiful image, Joanna...I could almost have guessed it was yours. :)

[Chris Starbuck]

I kind of got ahead of myself in the first post; listed what I did without explaining why. So to back up a step...

The reason burning doesn't work on blown highlights is that there's no color (hue) there, so burning just turns it gray, which looks unnatural. So the first thing needed is to get some color (a color which actually belongs there) back into those blown highlights. I took one approach on the leaf, Jules took another on the light area at the bottom of the frame. Once you have a natural-looking color in the highlights, you can burn them if needed to get a better looking result.

I think Jules' approach would probably work on the leaf, too, so long as you clone onto an empty layer so that you can then play with blending mode & opacity to fine tune the result.

Also, in keeping with my backwards approach to this:D, I should now comment on the photo itself: It's a really beautiful image! The butterfly just glows, and the BG has nice soft shapes and colors without being distracting. I don't really mind that the bfly is fairly centered, but a slight crop off the left might strengthen the composition a little.

Chris

[Joanna Trescott]

Chris and Jules. Thanks for your reposts. Chris I like the darkening of the leaf. Seems like alot of work! I would prefer to get a shot where I don't have to fix that much, but it isn't always possible. Can't wait to try both fixes.

[Chris Starbuck]

Joanna,
I guess the standard in-camera solution would be a polarizing filter to cut the leaf glare (which still wouldn't work very well around mid-day on a sunny day), but I think that would drive you to photograph at ISO 1600-3200 for insects. Some of the latest cameras probably have acceptable noise at those speeds, but constantly adjusting the pol while moving around chasing the bugs would be a real pain. This is one situation where I think "fix it in PS" is probably more practical. IMHO.

What I did in my repost was a lot of work, and probably more than necessary. I'm sure there's an easier way to get there (for example the selection on the leave probably doesn't need to be very precise); this was a first attempt, kind of winging it.

Chris

[Robert O'Toole]

I hope this is the right forum...I took this in The Butterfly Pavillion. Canon 20D, 1/200 @ 5.6. ISO 800. 250mm with 100-400mm lens. I don't like the hot leaf, but burning it did not work. Any suggestions?

The best method other than reconvert a darker version of the Raw file and blend the 2, would be to create a new layer and Multiply the area by changing the blending mode. My APTATS CD has a tutorial on this method. It takes a couple of seconds and works well in most cases.
In the example below it did increase the detail in the highlight area but did not cause any color shifts.
Looks okay but the proper way is to convert another file at -1 and blend the 2 images. This will be in APTATS 2 :)

Robert

[Robert O'Toole]

Nice Bfly, sharp and the BG is nice and smooth. Have you tried flash Joanna? I think flash would have really helped fill in and light the wing. The halos from A/H or lightening/dodging are really apparent.

I agree with Julie about the noise I find that much more distracting that the leaf highlight.

Robert

[Robert O'Toole]

Joanna,
I couldn't resist the challenge (I have entirely too much time on my hands at the moment:)).

Here's what I ended up with, after a couple dead ends. Obviously lots of steps can be adjusted to taste, but I think there's maybe the beginnings of a general approach here for dealing with blown highlights in localized (reasonably selectable) areas.


Chris

Not to take anything away from your approach Chris I have seen it before and it has it uses, but the proper way to handle the blown area is in Raw conversion with recovery or in worse cases an extreme conversion -2, low contrast, etc. Then you blend the recovered area. This would take only a minute or 2 depending on how fast your computer can convert a Raw file of course.
This would take a lot less time that the approach you have outlined. Just something to consider.

Robert

[Mike Moats]

Hey Joanna, I really like the image. Great looking comp and the colorful orbs add a nice touch.