Magnificent Hummingbird

[Richard Unsworth]

:S3:

Hi

Captured at Cielito Sur, Cerro Punta, Panama

1/250, Ev -0.33, ISO 800, f 8
NR in Topaz

Canon 40D, 100-400 +1.4

[Joe Senzatimore]

Stunning capture with fine detail and exposure. Love the comp. as well. I do find the perch a bit bright. Perhaps it could be toned down a bit.

[John Guastella]

Gorgeous little bird, excellent detail. I like the look-back pose and the raised bill. I think the bird could stand significant brightening (it looks quite dark on my monitor, a MacBook Pro). The white patches in the BG are distracting, but they will be difficult to clone out without making the BG look artificial. Perhaps they could be darkened a bit?

John

[Robert Holguin]

I really like the pose and the detail. Real nice colors, but I do agree that the bird could be brighten a tad more. Other than that well done.

[Richard Unsworth]

I really like the pose and the detail. Real nice colors, but I do agree that the bird could be brighten a tad more. Other than that well done.


:S3:
ok, thanks glad you like it

Can someone advise best/ suitable PP to deal with this?

[John Guastella]

Richard, I would start with the S&H adjustment for an image like this. Here is an example, where I increased the Shadows value to 25%, with the Tonal Width and Radius values at their default of 50% and 30 pixels. I created a mask to selectively apply the adjustment to the bird. I followed up the S&H adjustment with a Curves adjustment to reduce the brightness of the BG. I used the same mask created for the S&H adjustment, but just inverted it to apply the Curves adjustment to the BG only. I didn't spend a lot of time on this, so the result is not optimized, but it illustrates the general idea of what is possible. Also, I typically don't do these sort of manipulations on JPEG files, as I feel the results are not good when applied to a compressed file.

John

[Richard Unsworth]

:S3:

Thanks John, useful work tip

I am familar with using S&H

I had a look at Quick Mask bird; adjust brightness, inverse lower contrast, there are so many ways, resulting in different but nice results. I will have a crack at your suggestion, the bird certainly looks brighter!