Great Spotted Woodpecker

[Jonathan Michael Ashton]

Canon 20D Canon 500mm F4 L IS

ISO 400 Neat Image applied also a little more contrast than previous shot
1/160 sec @ f4

All comments welcome

Jon

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the observant pose, the light looks challenging and I think it could use even more contrast and I would crop a bit off the right to make it a vertical.

[Melvin Grey]

The light might be classed as 'challenging' i.e. it is not 'full frontal' but it gives plenty of detail and a nice soft three dimensional feel to the bird. Another unusual pose for this species, well done Jonathan.

Melvin

[Juan Aragonés]

Jonathan I like this one a lot, the sharpness is fantastc, the BG is really pleasant and the species is one of my favourite. I would go for a vertical croping for sure and I think that the image can be improved warming up the colors, adding a touch of Gaussian blur to the Bg and levels-color adjustment on the bird. I really like this photograph and I have enjoyed a lot reprocessing it (you can do a lot of things with the RAW of this file... I am envious ;)).

[Jonathan Michael Ashton]

Thanks very much Juan, I really like your repost and I think the colours are very much better, I am not sure how you managed to get such clean colours and a pleasant background - did you do the bird and background in separate layers? I have tried and I have made some improvement but so far my versions don't come close to yours.
Jon

[Juan Aragonés]

Thanks very much Juan, I really like your repost and I think the colours are very much better, I am not sure how you managed to get such clean colours and a pleasant background - did you do the bird and background in separate layers? I have tried and I have made some improvement but so far my versions don't come close to yours.
Jon

Jonathan I worked the image using different layers. I worked the BG in one layer adjusting the colour balance and adding a little touch of Gaussian blur. The bird was worked in two layers and... well I would try to find some free time later and to post details of the process with some screen captures ;)

I am glad to hear that you like the result.

[Juan Aragonés]

Jonathan I have uploaded in Mediafire two files (http://www.mediafire.com/?4sgm14m2tn4 and http://www.mediafire.com/?02dlz2f4nnm) with the basic process I did on your image. Download them and follow this steps:
1) First of all I made a selection to separate the bird and the green BG using the magic wand tool in additive mode (tolerance = 15).
2) duplicate layer (two times). In one of the layer I delete the bird and in the other one I deleted the BG. This way I have three layers, the original one (named “Background layer”), another one to work on the BG (named “Green BG”) and a third one to work on the bird (named “Bird 1)
3) In the layer “Green BG” I modified the color balance (hit “ctrl+B” and select yellow = -54 and red +15), then I applied a touch of Gaussian blur (ratio = 1,9) and the background is ready to go.
4) Then I went to the “Bird 1” layer to work on the saturation and contrast of the tail and undertail feathers. I worked the saturation (ctrl +U) adding more red and desaturating the blues a bit (red= 22, blue= -25). A touch of level adjustment on the bird.
5) I duplicate the bird once more time (“Bird 2” and I added more level adjustment a new version of the bird, much lighter and with less red in the breast. On this layer and using a brush in erase mode, I deleted almost of the bird except the breast and some other areas.
6) My last step is to merge the layers “Bird 1”, “Bird” and “Background”. In this new layer I apply Unsharp Mask with the following values (umbral 0, ratio, 0,3 and amount 93). I always keep umbral in 0 and ratio in 0,3 and I only modify the amount.

That´s all and I hope it helps:)

[Jonathan Michael Ashton]

Many thanks Juan, I really appreciate your taking time to explain. I will try to get similar results using your technique

Jon