Appalachain Brown Butterfly

[Allen Sparks]

Canon 40D, Sigma 150mm macro + Tamron 1.4 pro teleconverter, hand held
ISO 400, f16, 1/200. 580 EX II. manual exposure

[Peter Farrell]

Very sharp image of a sharp looking butterfly. Maybe slightly over exposed?? I don't like the dark spot above its head

[Julie Kenward]

Allen, this is very nice. I think I might have gone vertical with this since the leaf seems to flow that way - it would have been nice to see the complete leaf and butterfly within the frame. You do have nice sharpness but I think a little additional could be used on the eye and the top half of the front wing.

If you are good at cloning/painting, you might select the butterfly and leaf, inverse the selection (leaving only the BG) and then painting or cloning over the BG to smooth it out a bit. At the time of the photograph I think you could have gotten away with a wider aperture and that would have given you a smoother BG in camera...maybe f10 or even f8 as the butterfly seems pretty close to being in one even focal plane.

[Don Lacy]

Hi Allen, I agreed with Jules on over all sharpness so I brought it into PS and sharpen it a bit more with Smart Sharpen at amount 40 and radius 1 on a duplicate layer, I then faded the the Luminosity and used a mask to apply the sharpening only to the BF, I then did another round of sharpening on the eye only using Photo Kit plugin. Also I think the BF is a little tight in the frame and if you have the canvas I would give it a tad more room.

[Julie Kenward]

Don, why did you fade the luminosity when sharpening? I've never heard of that before. Can you explain so everyone can pick up on that technique?

[Don Lacy]

Don, why did you fade the luminosity when sharpening? I've never heard of that before. Can you explain so everyone can pick up on that technique?
Hi Jules, After sharpening I go to edit and on the drop down menu chose the Fade option this brings up another box with another drop down menu were you can chose what to fade at the very bottom is luminosity. The reason I do this is that it helps eliminate halos thus allowing you to use stronger sharpening amounts.

[Allen Sparks]

Thanks Don, your repost looks great. I'll have to learn these advanced sharpening techniques!

Allen

[Julie Kenward]

Thank you, Don. I had heard about the fade option a long time ago and then it had slipped my mind to try it. Thanks for the reminder!

[Cindy Mead]

wonderful clarity, colors and details Allen- good use of flash as well. (I appreciate the added advice on the sharpening technique in the repost too Don) :)

[Jerry van Dijk]

Nice butterfly Allen. Agree that it could use a little more room around and wish the leaf wasn't cut of.