Egret with Black BG

I was attempting to capture images of great egrets in flight against a black background. This image was taken from the rather steep bank of a bayou when the sun was low enough to put the opposite bank in deep shadow, yet the bird high enough to be illuminated. Breeding coloration, the green on the face around the eyes, would have been nice. Oh well.
The problem is this: since no fill flash was used the black legs are practically invisible. Just to see how it would look I brightened the shadows and the legs where visible, of course there goes the black background. I know with a little work I could have the legs show and still have a black background. The question is "should I even worry about the legs being visible?" I did some sharpening, but I need more practice in doing it correctly. Any technique advice, criticism and post processing tips would be appreciated. ~onlybill
Sony A-700 Tamron 200-500mm@500mm F6.3 1/1250sec ISO 200 no EV adj 6:45PM

Hi William As presented I like the top wing surface, it has texture and detail, don't like he neck areas since is in shadows and dark. The main concern here is light direction in order to illuminate the entire bird. Regarding the lets I think it is important to have some detail also.

Framing wise I would like seeing more room for the bird and the image made before it started moving away from your position. Do appreciated what you were trying to do and came very close !!!

I really like this - very artistic!

I agree with Alfred regarding the framing and wishing the bird was not flying away from the viewer. You asked about sharpening above. That's a big question and not easy to answer simply. There are many, many ways to go about it and not every methods works for every photo. I recommend reading "Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop CS2" by Bruce Fraser. Also check the educational forum for hints. I played around with your image a bit and came up with the following as an alternative version. Hope you like it.

I agree with the above and Leroy's alternative version makes this photo a great one!

Good stuff above and as you can see by Leroy's great re-post the image as presented originally was at least a stop or two underexposed...

I appreciate fthe advice. I am now making every attempt to photograph birds in the "flying toward me position" whereas previous to BPN I wasn't too concerned about this. Everyones advice about cropping has also had an influence on how I frame the image while actually taking the photo. Indeed other critiques about how one of my images, and others as well, can be improved are being taken into consideration at the moment new photographs are created. Leroy: you played around with my image and came up with your repost. I like it a a lot, and even the shadow in the neck area was improved greatly. Could you give me a basic idea of what you did? ~onlybill

Here's what I did (as best I can recall) First thing was to change the overall light and color balance. I found the brightest and darkest parts by adding a threshold layer and moving the slider all the way to one side to find the brightest spot and the other to find the darkest. Then with curves I set the white point on the bright spot (top of the head), the black point on the dark (one of the legs) and the gray point on the wing (you'll have to try a few spots to get a good color - mostly to taste at this point). To keep the legs visible select the left point on the curve and keep the input level at 0 and move it up to make the output level about 10.

After this the water had a green cast so I used select color range to select the water and using curves I adjusted the R,G,B channels separately to get a more neutral water color. Use the color sampler tool and put a sample point on a light spot in the water and one on dark spot. You can monitor the RGB values in the info pallet. Change the curves until all three numbers are close together (within a few points will appear basically neutral).

To fix the neck shadow and brighten the face/beak do the following. Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N) don't use the create new layer icon as the options menu doesn't appear. In the options menu change the mode to overlay and check the fill with 50% gray box. Set the default colors to black and white (press D) choose the brush tool (press B) and set the brush opacity to 10-15%. The brush hardness should be fairly soft to avoid obvious edges. Now select your overlay layer and paint white to lighten the image and black to darken. This is in my opinion the best way to go about dodging and burning. Since it's on a new layer you can make changes, mask areas that you overshot, change the opacity etc... I made a simple action to create this layer since I use it all the time.

To get more contrast in feathers use the select color range tool then in the pulldown menu choose highlights. Click OK. Then feather the selection. For full size images you'll want to feather by 100-200 pixels. Copy and paste this selection to a new layer and change the overlay mode to multiply. Adjust the opacity to taste and mask out any areas that don't look correct. I have an action for this as well since I shoot egrets a lot and this is often useful.

Lastly the image was sharpened a touch. The method I use is one described in Fraser's book and is the basis behind the PhotoKit Sharpening macros one can purchase from PixelGenius. Long story short the idea is to sharpen through an edge mask fairly heavily then change the blending mode to avoid sharpening on high contrast edges. The result is that you can sharpen midtones a lot and avoid halos. If halos do appear it's easy to remove since this is on a new layer with a mask. You simply paint over the halos with a black brush on the layer mask and they're gone. The whole process is rather lengthy (20+ steps) but with an action it takes only a few seconds.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leroy Laverman

Here's what I did (as best I can recall) First thing was to change the overall light and color balance. I found the brightest and darkest parts by adding a threshold layer and moving the slider all the way to one side to find the brightest spot and the other to find the darkest. Then with curves I set the white point on the bright spot (top of the head), the black point on the dark (one of the legs) .........

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excellent work Leroy.
Might help OP and others to note what you have preset black and white point eyedroppers to in curves when you double click the eyedropper For example 20/20/20 and 247/247/247

Excellent suggestion Dave. I'd forgotten you could do that. Thanks for the reminder. :)

Love Leroy's repost. Very dramatic.