Help with postprocessing

I wondered if I should post this here and then figured I would do it anyway. I read other's discussions on digital workflow and have to admit, it's a bit confusing. While I continue to learn how to expose correctly in the field, it seems postprocessing is as important toward attaining the end product. Now, it is time to ramp up the digital processing aspects and one way I might be able to work toward my goals is to post a pre-processed photo and a post-processed photo and describe the workflow. The intention, of course, is to receive feedback, suggestions, etc.

Here is the original. The camera is the Sony a700 (12 mp), 1.5 crop and the 70-400mm sony zoom (4-5.6) lens. The photo was shot at about 7:30 am at f5.6, ISO400, 1/1600, -.7EV, evaluative and manual metering. I was in my canoe, camera handheld.

I appreciate your time and help. Thanks!
Connie

I use a laptop and have LR2 and CS4. I do not use CS4 much as I don't know how to use layers adequately yet.
I forgot to mention above, I shoot in RAW.
In Lightroom, I process the Raw version and with this photo, the workflow went like this:
checked for blown out highlights and dark spots using historgram. Barely needed to make adjustments here (whites on neck, darks on underside of right wing)
Increased temperature from 5500 to 6048
Increased contrast a bit
Cropped to 8x10 to rid of some of right and bottom
Used adjustment brush on bill and head for sharpening, some increase in brightness, clarity and saturation
Used tone curve, medium contrast to lighten shadows some more
Increased luminance and saturation on feathers
Used a bit of sharpening and masking
Noise reduction on luminance
Converted to jpeg but the file was greater than 200 so I opened in CS4 and saved for web.

What would you have done?
Thank you!

Very uniquie pose. Color and detail looks pretty good. The first thing that strikes me is the vegetation in the bottom left, it is quite distracting. If your ethics allow I would clone them out. Also try to recover the detail in the hot spot on the shoulder.

Ray:)

You have done a good job recovering the picture. Such side lighting always creates difficulties in post processing. The method you mentionned seems to give good results. Here is how I work:

From Lightroom (in RAW), I will do everything to make sure I do not have clipping pixels using temp, recovery, selective adjustments and even reducing exposure in extreme cases. Then I will try to lighten the darker tones using fill light. Here it is touchy, you do not want to induce too much noise. If there is still room to play with the pixels, I would increase vibrance. Then I export to PS in 16 bits. In PS, I first run a noise reduction on a duplicate layer. With a picture showing difficult lighting like this one, I would then go to shadows and highlights, curves, cloning, etc...
I hope this can help you.

Hi Connie Great idea posting both and should get a ton of useful feedback !!!

First thing that comes to mind is the color The original has a realistic color but the worked image is a bit overworked, the increase in color temp is a bit much, might have tried for a slight saturation increase.

Next big change you can do is to take care of the hot areas, I tried using the select color and multiply but it was a bit much for it. Only solution and easy would be to clone some texture from surrounding areas. Use the Clone stamp and set opacity to 60 to 70 %

You did well with the far wing but again might have done a little less, I think when looking at the image your eyes sort of accept it has to be a little darker. As presented it looses the nice texture but again you did real well !!!

Biggest suggestion for this image is at the time of making the exposure ... a little less light and more from your back for even lighting !!! Your doing well !!! ... and yes the post processing today is just as important as the image making .. its the total package !!!

HI Connie - AL has pretty much nailed it - Love the unusual pose, always best to get the exposure right in the camera via the use of the histogram and the over exposure blinkies - the angle of light is important too.
Good show - keep them coming :)

Hi Connie,
I like your repost, would also clone out the remaining tips of the green leaves on the bottom left side of the frame...Mr. Forns covered the techs. Looking forward to your next one...:cool:

This is great! Wow, expectations exceeded. Thank you all, I'm taking notes and will try some of the specific strategies pointed out here. Alfred, I never thought of cloning from other areas of wing into the highlighted portion, good tip. These suggestions will also serve as a good impetus for learning CS4. Thanks again for taking the time to help.
Connie

great thread!! connie, i think you did awesome with this one. i would have never thought you could get the detail in the underwing. great job. al's assessment is thorough and a lot of good info. keep em coming!!

Hi Connie...I agree you need to take it easy with the saturation of the forward wing....small moves with this control are usually best. If you can find time to learn layers , you will be amazed at what you can do. Love the pose....Hope to see more of your work soon!