Originally Posted by
Smon d'Entremont
(edit: this image looks less sharp than the original...I may have messed up in downsizing to meet forum rules).
Smon, it looks plenty sharp, and the colors are quite nice. In fact, maybe the inside of the beak is a bit too bright -- I had trouble "reading" the beak until I concluded that it was almost wide open. If you kept your layers, you might experiment with that portion of the image.
BTW, I use LightRoom to prep images for emailing in various sizes and densities. Just highlight your image, press CTRL/Shft/E, and set up your export that way.
- removed branch (coming from branch on the right) coving last 1/4 of tail...reconstructed end of tail and fixed branch on the right (I'm amazed I was able to do this).
You did an excellent job on that process!
- made layers for the background (smoothed using Gaussian and Lens blurs) and bird (lightened up inside mouth and brightened eye)
I don't think the background is too smooth, but --again -- if you saved the layers (sometimes I don't, unfortunately) you could try different intensities of blurs and take snapshots, then compare the different results.
- in retrospect, I should have traded some shutter speed for increased depth of field to get more of the bird in focus...but things happen fast with these little birds.
They are indeed fast, but you might have sacrificed 1 stop of speed to get an extra stop of aperture for this shot, given that this bird was not in motion. Of course, they don't sit still for long, do they?
A question...is the background too smooth? (looks that way to me) Should I add noise to it? If yes, what's the best way to do this?
A good way to roughen the background might be to use less blur in PS. How's the bokeh at F4 without all those background changes?