Help with post processing

[arash_hazeghi]

I took this picture when I saw the gulls fighting over food, lightning was bad and I didn't have time to adjust the meter, this is what I got after curves, noise reduction and saturation adjustmnet, is there anything else that can save this shot?

Thanks and happy new year! :)

http://www.stanford.edu/~ahazeghi/Photos/birds/gulls.jpg

[Dan Brown]

Hi Arash. In my repost, I used shadow/highlight filter in CS3 to adjust the image further, which increased the visibility of grey speckles along the right edge of the frame. I clones these speckles out.:) FYI, your original post was larger than is allowed (1100 X 733)? I don't know how that happens, but I had to reduce it to 1024 X 800 to repost.

[Alfred Forns]

if you post the tech info will be easier to help you out !! Might also post this at Eager to Learn forum and will get feedback from the entire gang !!!

I like what Dan came up with ... and he is correct about the size, Its over the limit !!

With this light is important to have the right exposure in camera, the bg will be blown but birds will look good and no need for extreme work in PS. The base exposure should have been around 1 2/3 over ... neat interaction !!!

[Charles Glatzer]

One thing you can do is move the center slider (midtones) in Levels to the left.

More importantly....do you know why the image came out dark? And, how to easily prevent it from happening again in the future?

Chas

[arash_hazeghi]

Thank you for taking the time to process the photo, I can see it already improved. Shooting data is Canon 40D, 400 f/5.6 at f/6.3 1/1250sec ISO 640. I am well aware of why it came out dark, it was a backlit situation and the camera pointed toward the sky, meter will be fooled to underexpose by 2 stops, however this happened in a blink of an eye, I saw something I pulled out the camera and snapped the whole process was less than a second so I had no time to adjust the exposure or even try to reframe, I took a burst of 16 photos and only the first one which is the posted shot came out usable, all the rest the birds are looking away from the camera so I had only one shot.
thanks

[David Thomasson]

I used the shadow/highlight filter and made a levels adjustment on the birds to bring out details a little more, then painted in some sky and clouds.

http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/8022/birdfix2ff0.jpg

[arash_hazeghi]

Awesome david, I think this is worth putting on my gallery now. Thank you very much for your time.

[Alfred Forns]

Excellent David The re post is worth the price of admission :)

[David Thomasson]

Excellent David The re post is worth the price of admission :)

Thank you! I guarantee it, or double your money back!! :p