Red-tailed Pennant

[Mike Hannisian]

This dragonfly was shot with a Canon 40D and a Canon 100-44-00mm f/4.5-5.6 floating on a boogie board while I was in about 3 feet of water. The ISO was 400; the aperture was f/9.0; a shutter speed of 1/250; and en EV of -0.33. Nothing was added or removed but the image was slightly cropped.

[Arthur Morris]

Neat dragonfly with killer BKGR. It seemed as if the df was not sharpened at all.... After adding 10 points of BLACKs to the WHITEs in Selective Color to tone down the perch I sharpened only the df at about 175/.3 in Unsharp Mask and painted the sharpening in on a hide-all mask. All as described in detail in Digital Basics (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252).

Yikes. Just realized that I failed to upload my repost but at this point it is somewhat moot in view of Ron's excellent repost :e3

[Mike Hannisian]

Artie, Thanks for the input.

[Arthur Morris]

You are most welcome. Great to see you posting here.

[Ron Sprunger]

Jack, I tried Artie's treatment, plus a second round of USM at .2/150, (still learning how to deal with these low-res images) and it was a great improvement. I really like the picture, and that background is as good as it gets.

Artie probably did it better; I didn't take much time refining edges; but here's the result, with apologies.

101094

[Arthur Morris]

Looks great Ron. Always good to practice new stuff. I did not make a selection. I applied the sharpening to the whole image and then added and painted away a Hide-All mask as taught to me by Denise Ippolito and as detailed in Digital Basics. (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252)

[John Storjohann]

The repost takes an already good image over the top...love the BG, the color on the dragonfly, nice pose...the sharpening just brings out the best in it.

[Mike Hannisian]

Thanks to everyone for the input.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Mike and welcome to the Macro forum! I like the light and the way the dragonfly stands out against the clean background. The extra sharpening in Ron's repost has made a world of difference. In an ideal world, I would wish the the dragonfly's wing wasn't obscuring its abdomen. :S3: I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work.

[Mike Hannisian]

Thanks.

[Ken Childs]

Hi Mike, great job on the OP and the repost by Ron with extra sharpening looks great! In addition to what Artie suggested about the selective color adjustment, you might also try selecting just the branch and lowering the highlights with the shadows/highlights tool. I've found that the combination of SH and selective color can work miracles on overexposed branches. :S3:

[Mike Hannisian]

Sounds like a good thought, thanks.