Northern Parula

[Karl Egressy]

One of my favorite warbler species.
Picture was taken at Rondeau, Ont. in natural setting.
Thanks for looking.


Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Manual Exposure
Tv 1/800
Av 7.1
Spot Metering
ISO 320
EF500mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x
Fill Flash at -2 1/3

[Arthur Morris]

Wonderful bird, pose, framing, and setting but the bird looks a bit over-sharpened and maybe a tad over-saturated.... You did well with difficult backlight. Needs some Eye Doctor work as a result of the flash.

If you post one less sharpened I would love to take a crack at the backlight and eye problems....

ps: are you sharpening your master files and then downsizing them?

[Karl Egressy]

"ps: are you sharpening your master files and then downsizing them?"

Thank you for your comments, Artie.
Yes, I do.
I use two ore three rounds of sharpening with radius 0.5 amount 35, Gaussian Blur.
Then I reduce the size to resolution 146.3 which amounts to 1024 with.
It is done using Bicubic Sharper whic usually sharpens the picture further for presentation.
Here is a version that i did not use Bicubic Sharper when downsizing and "eye doctored" the eye by selecting it and boositng brightness/contrast and reducing the size of catch light.
I hope it looks better.

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc29/karlo1789/DW3C4907av.jpg

[Richard Stern]

Hi Karl,

I agree with Artie's comments about the sharpening and saturation. I don't see any problem with the eye myself. I would like to see a less tight crop, and a bit more natural setting.

To Artie - does it matter whether one sharpens the master file (raw presumably) before downsizing? I know that with a jpeg file, sharpening should be done after downsizing. I tend to do at least some sharpening and noise reduction on the Raw file in Lightroom before exporting as a jpeg. Is it better not to?

Thanks,

Richard

[Arthur Morris]

Richard, The bottom half of the eye in both versions has blue-steel eye from the flash.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Karl,

To Artie - does it matter whether one sharpens the master file (raw presumably) before downsizing? I know that with a jpeg file, sharpening should be done after downsizing. I tend to do at least some sharpening and noise reduction on the Raw file in Lightroom before exporting as a jpeg. Is it better not to?

Thanks,

Richard

Richard, Tiny amounts of "in-camera" sharpening are OK as digital files are inherently unsharp as compared to film. I do mine with a Clarity setting of 30 as my default. I also do some NR upon conversion as my default.

My understanding is that with LR you cannot really control the level of sharpening during conversion. If that is true it should be turned off for sure.

We advise that aside from selective sharpening via a Contrast Mask (not true sharpening) that folks NEVER sharpen their master files. Ever. Sharpening should only be done once an image is sized for a final use such as print or web.

Do you have Digital Basics (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252)? Everything above and tons more including dozens of great PS tips and my complete Digital Workflow is there :)

[Richard Stern]

Do you have Digital Basics (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252)? Everything above and tons more including dozens of great PS tips and my complete Digital Workflow is there :)

Hi Artie,

I don't, but I will certainly correct that!

Thanks,

Richard

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Richard. It really is a gem. Every re-post that I create here is 100% DB :).