Theme but me thinks too much

[Stan Cunningham]

I took this a couple days ago on a perch I set up. It goes with the theme, but too me the background is too bright. Mostly due to a harsh light here in the low desert, should have waited another 30 minutes or more before I called.
7D, 500 F4, ISO 500 F 5.6 1/3200
I tried to reduce the brightness in the backgrnd a little with color efex but it alluded me.
As always comments appreciated.

[laurie golden]

Stan,

Beautiful bird and perch. Nice to see some green in your desert - I like the color, it is not to bright.

[Satish Ranadive]

Wonderful image with lovely composition. Like the pose of the bird and colorscheme.

[Doug West]

The background looks fine to me. My only wish would be not having that
bud behind the tail.

Doug

[Jonathan Ashton]

Stan I like the shot, I have a couple of suggestions:
1. I would reduce the brightness on the bird
2. Take a peek around the edges of bird, I can see noise, I assume this is due to sharpening or conversely where you did not apply NR to the background - maybe a bit of both?
3. You would be able to selectively sharpen/NR very effectively using the quick selection tool.
4. I suspect the red flowers are slightly oversaturated
5. I f you are unhappy with the background I would suggest you try desaturating the yellows there - (using quick mask or layer mask)
Hope this helps a little.

[jack williamson]

The Bg looks fine to me, the bird and perch are a little bright. Nice perch, pose and HA.

Jack

[Randy Stout]

Stan:

Nice components, but I find the exposure too hot for my taste (like my red heads head :S3:), and agree with Jonathan's comments.

In ran a multiply layer set at 46% on the entire image via a luminosity layer, selective curves tweak with pointer on bird and pulled down curve, masked to bird only.

Selective color, magenta, pulled the magenta slider down to -60. Some detail lost to overexposure of that channel I think.

The bird does look oversharpened, and I do see the edge issues Jonathan pointed out.

You can do a better job on the raw file, but I think there is more potential in there.

The perch is still too bright and can be burned in a bit as well.

Cheers

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Stan, super alert pose from the little guy, and I like the perch. Not much else to add from the above comments, but I would also try a version with a little off the top.

[Stan Cunningham]

Thanks guys, I reduced the brightness on the bird 12% and it looks much better. And Jonathan caught my sloppy NR, usually just use define and then create a layer and paint out the bird, need to be a little finer.
Thanks again.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I like it and dont think the bg is too bright but Randy's post made a great improvement and gave this image the pop it needed to show it off.