My Turn: Is it Real or is it PS?

[Doug Brown]

I can't let Artie have all the fun. What do you all think? Is this the genuine article or some PS trickery?

http://birdwhisperer.smugmug.com/Animals/Birds/BPN/20091025-MG7951-Wood-Duck-5x7/749940622_D3Te6-O.jpg

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

My wild guess would be something is done to the background behind the head near the end of the frame and the upper beak touching the head.

[Joel Eade]

It seems the water behind and upper right is very different....I think there's trickery afoot.

[Jeff Wear]

real and you may have removed some leafs? but you did overdue the blue more that just a bit

[gary rouleau]

Ok Doug, I'll bite! The water is fine no PS there. The Head and beak also ok no PS. The back of the duck I think has been worked on. I think I see some noise there if look with one eye closed and stand on my head.

Let's get out sometime this week.
gary

[Doug Brown]

Only 3 brave souls?

[Luis Villablanca]

I think you changed the color of the water. There is still some residue of at the base of the breast that seems to give it away. Maybe you changed the blue sky reflection to better match the colors on the duck.

[Arthur Morris]

If you did anything major you did it well as there is nothing obvious when viewing the post JPEG. I am glad that nobody took it into Photoshop and enlarged it; I consider that dirty bumper pool. That said the curve of the forehead does look a bit too sharp.

Killer calling pose, sharp with a very good EXP, and a perfect head angle. What's with noisy blue's on the duck's back?

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Hmm, did you replace the wings?

[Juan Aragonés]

Doug I have been playing a bit with the image in PS and I failed to find a single evidence of manipulation. I have a couple of PS tricks that are great to detect poor manipulations in photographs but... the only thing I can say is that you did a very good job (or, perhaps, you did nothing to the image ;))

[Doug Brown]

What's with noisy blue's on the duck's back?

Is Artie on to something here? Or not? :D

[Ilija Dukovski]

I'd guess the noise on the back is from brightening-up that part, but can't see any major cloning/QM job here.
Obviously well done, can't wait to see the original.

[Doug Brown]

Thanks to everyone who ventured a guess. I've photographed a lot of Wood Ducks, and usually I get the exposure right. But every now and again I totally blow it! This was one of those times, and of course the bird had a great pose. In the image the water looked great but the bird was significantly underexposed. How best to fix the photo? I used an HDR technique that I'll walk you through with screenshots. Here's the original image (cropped).

[paul leverington]

Wow Doug--please do post your rework of this shot. I have a lot like this!;)

Paul

[Doug Brown]

I intend to post the entire workflow. Unfortunately got called in to the hospital for an emergency. Check back tomorrow.

[Arthur Morris]

Good luck to the patient! :)

[Doug Brown]

Rough day! Just got home at 3:40 am. Need to unwind so I thought I'd start walking through the steps. This is somewhat advanced Photoshop work, but the results are quite nice. I'll start by showing you a 100% crop of the finished product. It's a little grainy but what I want you to see is how nicely the brightened bird's plumage is superimposed on the original darker BG. Even at 100% the PS work is hard to detect.

[Doug Brown]

Step 1: Export the original image into PS. This will become the Background layer of the HDR image.

[Doug Brown]

Step 2: Process the RAW file to get the bird looking the way you want, and then export this second image into Photoshop.

[Doug Brown]

Step 3: In Photoshop, using the optimized bird image from step 2, select the bird (I use a combination of Quick Select and the Lasso tool). You don't need to spend a lot of time on the feathers on top of the head or the ones on the back of the neck. Copy the selection to a new layer.

[Doug Brown]

More to come...after I get a little sleep!

[Doug Brown]

Step 4: Go into the 'Window' menu (Mac), choose 'Arrange', and then select 'Float All in Windows'. Go back to the 'Window' menu, choose 'Arrange', and this time select 'Tile'.

Step 5: Make the lightened bird image from step 3 the active window. Then drag and drop the thumbnail for the bird selection (the layer from step 3) onto the image you created in step 1.

[Doug Brown]

Step 6: using the Move tool (keyboard shortcut 'v') perfectly align the bright bird on top of the dark bird.

[Gerri Levine]

Hi Doug
Darn, I was going to guess HDR....really!!

[Doug Brown]

Step 7: Duplicate the Background layer, and add layer masks to the Background copy and the brightened bird layer. Your 'Layers' palette should look like this.

[Doug Brown]

Step 8: Do all of your BG NR and BG cloning on the Background copy layer.

[Doug Brown]

Step 9: Do all of your bird sharpening, dodging and burning, and cloning on Layer 1.

[David Thomasson]

Step 4: Go into the 'Window' menu (Mac), choose 'Arrange', and then select 'Float All in Windows'. Go back to the 'Window' menu, choose 'Arrange', and this time select 'Tile'.

Step 5: Make the lightened bird image from step 3 the active window. Then drag and drop the thumbnail for the bird selection (the layer from step 3) onto the image you created in step 1.

Step 6: using the Move tool (keyboard shortcut 'v') perfectly align the bright bird on top of the dark bird.
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Very nice work in rescuing this image, Doug! Here's an alternative workflow that eliminates the steps above:

From Camera Raw, open the image in Photoshop as a smart object. In the layers palette, right-click the background layer and choose this option:

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/8578/smart1.jpg

Next, still in the layers palette, double-click the layer icon of the copy and it will open in Camera Raw. Make further adjustments to brighten, click OK, and you're back inside Photoshop with two versions of the same image (perfectly aligned). Now mask out the water.

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7323/smart4.jpg

[Doug Brown]

Step 10: Using a black brush at 100% opacity, paint onto the layer mask for Layer 1 (the selected bird layer on top of the stack) around the edges of the bird where ever you see water that looks too bright. Don't let your brush go any farther onto the bird than necessary, because you'll reveal the dark version of the bird underneath.

[Doug Brown]

Thanks for the tip David! You should now have an HDR image with no evidence of PS work, even around difficult-to-select areas. This technique can help you otherwise-good images with significant exposure problems that would have ended up in the dumpster. This technique has many other uses too. Have fun with it!