Vintage Storks and Friends

I tried to make this 2 basic colors using green and rustic orange colors. I started with Topaz Simplify, masking the eyes. Then I used a Nik Color Efex Vintage preset but didn't get exactly what I wanted as it was too light and faded and lightest tones were too light. I added a Nik HDR Efex Pro effect at around 50% opacity which toned down the highlights and boosted blacks a little. I tinted the Spoonie and the beaks of the storks a little with the paint brush. I also toned down the reflections in the water as they were quite bright.

I like the look you achieved, Judy, especially in the lower three quarters of the image. Here's a suggestion, albeit one associated with a lot of work, that might give a more pleasing arrangement. Eliminate some of the birds to leave three distinct groups, all with only storks -- four on the left, five in the center, and two on the right. After all that, a bit could be cropped from the top.

Hi Judy, I think Dennis has a good suggestion but it might be a bit of work as he stated. As presented I might evict most of the reflection. Let's see what others say.:S3: I do love the filtering and the group is nicely arranged.

Thanks for the comments Dennis, but I am "just not that into" the image enough to take on multi-stork removal although I agree it would have a better composition if I did. :w3 I evicted part of one stork on the right.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Bishop

I like the look you achieved, Judy, especially in the lower three quarters of the image. Here's a suggestion, albeit one associated with a lot of work, that might give a more pleasing arrangement. Eliminate some of the birds to leave three distinct groups, all with only storks -- four on the left, five in the center, and two on the right. After all that, a bit could be cropped from the top.

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Thanks Denise! I thought about cropping out the reflections but never actually did it to see how it would look. I can try it and see what others think.

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Originally Posted by denise ippolito

Hi Judy, I think Dennis has a good suggestion but it might be a bit of work as he stated. As presented I might evict most of the reflection. Let's see what others say.:S3: I do love the filtering and the group is nicely arranged.

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I'd thought about cropping away some of the reflections. In fact, I tried it and didn't like what happened. However, I did try something else that reduced the competition between the reflections and the real things.

First, I copied the image and applied a reasonably strong Gaussian blur. After that, I added a mask, inverted it so there was no blur effect, and added a white gradient starting from the bottom and going pretty much to the bodies of the storks. That made the reflections less distinct.

Reflections are often darker than the object, so I added a Curves layer with the default Darker preset and copied the blur mask to it so the reflections were not only blurred but darkened. It keeps the reflections in the image but makes the storks the center of attention.

Hi, Judy, I think I'd like a crop from the bottom. You could remove the one stork between the left and center groups, the brown object and the egret on top of it and I think you'd get a nice grouping without a lot of work. I like the spoonie - I'd leave him there. What a treat to see them all together:S3:

Lots of opinions on this one :S3:

I like the image and the processing you used. I think I might take a little different approach. I'd remove the egret and crop a bit from the top.

Wow, lots of options presented and I appreciate the input very much. If I have time I might try toning down the reflections or Maureen's suggestion of removing the egret.