Great Egret Sunset Wing Stretch

This Great Egret was photographed on the afternoon of January 9^th, 2018 using the 7Dii and 100-400mm ii. As I was headed to one of my sunset spots to practice silhouettes, I noticed this egret on the “wrong” side of the road so I stopped to see if I could get into position quickly; get a few shots; and then make it back to the original side of the road for the silhouette practice. As I was photographing this bird, the direct Sunlight fell off the subject but remained on the water in the background. I later discovered I had made a huge mistake by having the WB set for the silhouettes and forgot to switch it back before taking about 50 shots of this subject. I was pleasantly surprised by the delightful discovery when I got them home.
Below are short rundowns of settings and my post processing:

ISO 800
AV ƒ/8
TV 1/250
Focal Length 400mm
Manual Exposure / Servo / Back Button Focus / WB 7500k

Processed in DPP4 and PScc

1) Cropped 8% off the bottom; Removed a small pile of bird poop from the perch using a QM
2) added Nik DE on the subject and selective NR on both subject and BG separately
3) smart sharpened after resizing .3 - 110; added adjustment layer for slight vibrance and sat boost (+6); and a reduced levels adjustment to counter the brightness brought on from sharpening.
I learned a ton optimizing this file and I’m sure there are white balance adjustments here to learn as well.

Thanks for taking the time to look. As always, comments and ideas are appreciated.

Noel:

Many ways to tweak this, mainly a matter of taste, but the bird is too murky and yellow for me.

I adjusted the color balance using level, then did a very quick selection of the bird and brightened just the bird.

Lots of options, just one to consider.

I do find the post a bit overpowering, so some work could be done on it as well.

Cheers

Randy

This is a really beautiful pose against a perfect background. I love the dangling leg. The perch is unfortunate. It seems many people are really having a tough time with white balance and colors. I agree with Randy, the bird was far too murky and yellow. These are white birds. They look white no matter what light you view them in. I would even take it farther from what he did and remove even more of the yellow cast to the bird.

Great pose on the bird. I don't mind the perch here. The background is very nice.

randy agree nice

Killer background and IQ. Like the stretchy too!

Thank you for the suggestions. I tried selecting the egret minus the bill and the legs, added a levels adjustment and moved the middle slider to -175. I had never tried this before. I now realize that with a much more careful selection, I could get the whites more white. This brings up two more areas where I'm having repeated trouble: 1) how to select the fine feathers away from the body (the plumage and the fine feathers at the very top of the head) without selecting any of the water - and 2) I feel like I'm losing detail by using this level adjustment method to correct the whites. I feel like my repost looks pretty unnatural. Any further suggestions are appreciated. Also, Randy and Isaac I agree 100% that the subject originally looked too yellow and murky, this is a great learning experience. Thanks John, Jay, Isaac, Stuart, and Randy for the encouraging words.

What camera do you use? What lens? What software are you lowering a slider -175 in? Which slider are you lowering? There really is no easy way to select those feathers. I

n general when you have an easy and smooth background like this one you can use the magic wand tool to get most of the areas selected. Then inverse the selection and fine tune it with the quick select tool and the lasso tool. Isolating those tiny feathers is a major problem and will take lots of time to do correctly. Zooming in far and using the lasso tool is the best method I think. Remember to hold down shift to add to the selection and hold down option (alt on a pc) to take away some of the selection. When you have your selection perfect feather it a few pixels and then be sure to save it.

You should not lose any details with any slider. To correct the whites you have to fully understand what is wrong with them and what needs to be done. In this case I think you need to select only the whites areas, being sure not to include the beak, eyes and legs in the selection. You need to reduce the yellows and reds. Then you need to decrease the blacks in the white to bring out the whites. You can make these adjustments in hue saturation and in selective color. Again you should not lose any details at all.

Noel,
Some of the world's best discoveries were made by accident! The egret image design is lovely. Great BG colors.
I agree that the whites were too yellow and you have received excellent advice on how to fix it.
Selecting the fly away feathers is time consuming but worth it. There are many ways to skin a cat and I will use a combination of magnetic lasso tool and/or refine edge option under selection tab.
I am Ok with the perch.
Very nice,
gail

Gail - Thank you for the encouraging words! I'm glad you like the image design and the BG. I will take the time soon to rework the image and make the selection to include all of the feathers.

Isaac - Thanks for your response. I use the Canon 7Dii and the 100-400 ii. I'll try the hue saturation and color selection adjustments as you've suggested. I was processing in Photoshop cc and had gone back to the tiff file and added a levels adjustment layer - and then moved the middle (of the three) sliders to the left of its initial position at 1.00 to 1.75 (not sure what else to call it). I included a screen capture to help explain what I did:

You increased the mid tones too much which I guess is why you lost some details. Just so I understand you did this to make the bird more white? Or to increase the exposure? In order to make the bird whiter you need to reduce the colors that are causing the color cast. You also need to bring up the whites by decreasing the amount of black in the white. Just making a bird brighter will cause loss of detail. The colors need to be worked on independent of the exposure. To increase the exposure you can do that easily by adjusting brightness in PS or the exposure during RAW conversion. I try to have all of that just about perfect in camera. Any highlight or shadow adjustments I do in DPP so that when I convert to a TIFF and work on the file in PS I have very little if any fine tuning on the exposure to do. That keeps the file the cleanest and with the least amount of noise.

Isaac - I'm seeing this a bit late. Yes I was trying to increase the whiteness of the bird (more white). I was simply trying to follow and imitate what Randy had suggested when he said: "I adjusted the color balance using level, then did a very quick selection of the bird and brightened just the bird." I misinterpreted that by making a levels adjustment. This is my 3rd month of trying to learn Photoshop and really my first try at something that needed a selective color adjustment. I was not trying to increase the exposure. Thank you for your explanation as this was really helpful. I went back and spent some time messing around with the selective color and hue/saturation adjustments. At some point soon, I'll rework the image again.