Indigo Bunting

[Herb Houghton]

Wallkill River NWR. 1D mark IV, 800 f5.6 with 1.4x III, iso 800, f9, 1/250, 580EX flash with better beamer shot from tripod/wimberley. I'm not sure how to control the horizontal band of light in his eye from the BB. Any suggestions appreciated.

Herb






www.herbhoughton.com

[Ofer Levy]

Nice colours, pose, eye contact, perch and BG. Easy to fix the line in the eye using some cloning in photoshop. IQ is not great - is it a big crop?

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Herb, colors, exposure, HA, BG, subject placement...all very good.

If you work large, then you should be able to use clone tool to do the eye doctoring.

For my tastes, it is a bit oversharpened. If its a big crop, since you have such nice BG, I think a wider view with the bird smaller in the frame might work and then IQ will not take a hit.

[Troy Lim]

Also the perch seems a bit bright. Hope you spend some time on this as it is a nice image if it is not a big crop.

[Arthur Morris]

Nailed by you in the field and by all above. Bird is over-sharpened and image is too contrasty.

COMP, perch, pose, head angle, and BKGR otherwise superb.

[Dumay de Boulle]

IQ not perfect but almost there, I would do a hi-lite adjustment on the perch and back off on the sharpening...Great BG and colors!

[Arthur Morris]

Herb, I forgot to ask: Are you sharpening your master files (optimized TIFFs) and then creating your JPEGs?

[Herb Houghton]

Herb, I forgot to ask: Are you sharpening your master files (optimized TIFFs) and then creating your JPEGs?

Hi Art. I usually sharpen the large file ( already jpeg) and then resize it for web. Maybe I should just edit a small file rather than edit large and reduce size after ?

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Herb, that is right....approach that works well for me is do all exposure, colors, curves, cloning activities on big file. Resize to 1024/ 800 and then do selective USM and selective NR on the resized file.

I use DPP to process raw files and set the sharpness slider to 3 or 4 in that. I've found out that does not cause oversharpening...BG blur deteriorates a bit but not significant(and when I do NR on the BG on the resized file, I get some more blur anyways). I have never been happy with 0 or 1 setting of sharpness in DPP. The details that are lost, I find hard to extract those later via USM without getting oversharpening effects.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Art. I usually sharpen the large file ( already jpeg) and then resize it for web. Maybe I should just edit a small file rather than edit large and reduce size after ?

Yikes. It's a rampant disease here lately. You should NOT be sharpening your master files. Images should be sharpened only after they are sized for final usage. I shall do a blog post on this soon and put something in the ER :).

Big files need lots of sharpening. Small files need small amounts....

[Herb Houghton]

Thanks Kaustubh and Artie. I tried a new edit, slightly less of a crop ( original was a bit heavy), less sharpening, decreased contrast. Also small S & H adjustment to balance the hot spots in the perch. I may have introduced more noise with the S & H adj.

[Arthur Morris]

The bird is still mega-oversharpened.... You need to start with an unsharpened master file, downsize it, and then sharpen it for web, something like unsharp mask at something like 175/.3/0.

[Herb Houghton]

The bird is still mega-oversharpened.... You need to start with an unsharpened master file, downsize it, and then sharpen it for web, something like unsharp mask at something like 175/.3/0.

Maybe it was oversharpened in conversion from ACR ? I should check my sharpening settings for the raw conversion. In PS, I sharpened the bird only, with unsharp mask 42/.3/0 which is much less than 175 for sharpening amount ?

[Arthur Morris]

I am mega-confused. Can you post the original image converted straight up and turned into a JPEG with no sharpening?

[noelle zaleski]

Maybe it was oversharpened in conversion from ACR ? I should check my sharpening settings for the raw conversion. In PS, I sharpened the bird only, with unsharp mask 42/.3/0 which is much less than 175 for sharpening amount ?


That is a good idea Herb, let us know how you make out with that.

This is a gorgeous bird you have captured :S3:

[Herb Houghton]

I am mega-confused. Can you post the original image converted straight up and turned into a JPEG with no sharpening?

Hi Artie. Here's a jpeg converted from raw, minor adjustments, resized for web. In ACR, I went to workflow options and switched from sharpen for screen to none. In the Detail dialogue in ACR, I reduced sharpening to 0 amount.

[Herb Houghton]

Hi Artie. Here's a jpeg converted from raw, minor adjustments, resized for web. In ACR, I went to workflow options and switched from sharpen for screen to none. In the Detail dialogue in ACR, I reduced sharpening to 0 amount.

Wow, I could see the oversharpening clearly now in comparison, but that is 0 sharpening in conversion.

[Arthur Morris]

I have prepared a repost but first a question: can you post the full frame original in JPEG form? (The image in Pane 16 is obviously cropped.)

[Herb Houghton]

I have prepared a repost but first a question: can you post the full frame original in JPEG form? (The image in Pane 16 is obviously cropped.)

Surely sir. Here's the full frame original sized for web.

[Nico Steenberg]

The colours is exposed beautifully and the bg is a killer. Like that perch :S3:

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Herb. We are finally getting somewhere. :). The original in Pane 19 is far from being critically sharp. With the very large crop, image quality problems are exacerbated.... You over-sharpened in an effort to make an unsharp image sharp so the problematic results in Panes 1, 11, and 16 are to be expected.

IAC, I did the best with my repost here by adding a bit of canvas on the right, darkening the pupil a bit, applying a contrast mask to the face only and then lightening the face, and then sharpening the image at about 150/.3/0. Still the bird's feathers are lacking any sharp detail.

[Arthur Morris]

ps: I started with the image in Pane 16.

[Herb Houghton]

Thanks for the PP tips Artie.

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. Thanks for your membership support!

[Daniel Cadieux]

I'm not going to add to what has been already said, but from a strictly compositional point-of-view, I find cropping more loosely gives a more pleasing result IMO. I almost always prefer small songbirds smaller in the frame. In this case it also helps with IQ as you are not cropping so strongly, and whatever detail there does not degrade as much. What do you think of something like this (I did not sharpen...just a post to show the crop):

[Arthur Morris]

Excellent advice by Dan. Love the wider crop.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

agree with Dan.

Since you have such nice clean BG, wider looks very good. If the base IQ of image is not very good or if there aren't enough pixels on the bird, its best to stay away from large crops.