I can't let Artie have all the fun. What do you all think? Is this the genuine article or some PS trickery?
http://birdwhisperer.smugmug.com/Ani...22_D3Te6-O.jpg
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I can't let Artie have all the fun. What do you all think? Is this the genuine article or some PS trickery?
http://birdwhisperer.smugmug.com/Ani...22_D3Te6-O.jpg
My wild guess would be something is done to the background behind the head near the end of the frame and the upper beak touching the head.
It seems the water behind and upper right is very different....I think there's trickery afoot.
real and you may have removed some leafs? but you did overdue the blue more that just a bit
Ok Doug, I'll bite! The water is fine no PS there. The Head and beak also ok no PS. The back of the duck I think has been worked on. I think I see some noise there if look with one eye closed and stand on my head.
Let's get out sometime this week.
gary
Only 3 brave souls?
I think you changed the color of the water. There is still some residue of at the base of the breast that seems to give it away. Maybe you changed the blue sky reflection to better match the colors on the duck.
If you did anything major you did it well as there is nothing obvious when viewing the post JPEG. I am glad that nobody took it into Photoshop and enlarged it; I consider that dirty bumper pool. That said the curve of the forehead does look a bit too sharp.
Killer calling pose, sharp with a very good EXP, and a perfect head angle. What's with noisy blue's on the duck's back?
Hmm, did you replace the wings?
Doug I have been playing a bit with the image in PS and I failed to find a single evidence of manipulation. I have a couple of PS tricks that are great to detect poor manipulations in photographs but... the only thing I can say is that you did a very good job (or, perhaps, you did nothing to the image ;))
Is Artie on to something here? Or not? :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Arthur Morris
I'd guess the noise on the back is from brightening-up that part, but can't see any major cloning/QM job here.
Obviously well done, can't wait to see the original.
Thanks to everyone who ventured a guess. I've photographed a lot of Wood Ducks, and usually I get the exposure right. But every now and again I totally blow it! This was one of those times, and of course the bird had a great pose. In the image the water looked great but the bird was significantly underexposed. How best to fix the photo? I used an HDR technique that I'll walk you through with screenshots. Here's the original image (cropped).
Wow Doug--please do post your rework of this shot. I have a lot like this!;)
Paul
I intend to post the entire workflow. Unfortunately got called in to the hospital for an emergency. Check back tomorrow.
Good luck to the patient! :)
Rough day! Just got home at 3:40 am. Need to unwind so I thought I'd start walking through the steps. This is somewhat advanced Photoshop work, but the results are quite nice. I'll start by showing you a 100% crop of the finished product. It's a little grainy but what I want you to see is how nicely the brightened bird's plumage is superimposed on the original darker BG. Even at 100% the PS work is hard to detect.
Step 1: Export the original image into PS. This will become the Background layer of the HDR image.
Step 2: Process the RAW file to get the bird looking the way you want, and then export this second image into Photoshop.
Step 3: In Photoshop, using the optimized bird image from step 2, select the bird (I use a combination of Quick Select and the Lasso tool). You don't need to spend a lot of time on the feathers on top of the head or the ones on the back of the neck. Copy the selection to a new layer.
More to come...after I get a little sleep!
Step 4: Go into the 'Window' menu (Mac), choose 'Arrange', and then select 'Float All in Windows'. Go back to the 'Window' menu, choose 'Arrange', and this time select 'Tile'.
Step 5: Make the lightened bird image from step 3 the active window. Then drag and drop the thumbnail for the bird selection (the layer from step 3) onto the image you created in step 1.
Step 6: using the Move tool (keyboard shortcut 'v') perfectly align the bright bird on top of the dark bird.
Hi Doug
Darn, I was going to guess HDR....really!!
Step 7: Duplicate the Background layer, and add layer masks to the Background copy and the brightened bird layer. Your 'Layers' palette should look like this.
Step 8: Do all of your BG NR and BG cloning on the Background copy layer.
Step 9: Do all of your bird sharpening, dodging and burning, and cloning on Layer 1.
Very nice work in rescuing this image, Doug! Here's an alternative workflow that eliminates the steps above:Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug Brown
From Camera Raw, open the image in Photoshop as a smart object. In the layers palette, right-click the background layer and choose this option:
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/8578/smart1.jpg
Next, still in the layers palette, double-click the layer icon of the copy and it will open in Camera Raw. Make further adjustments to brighten, click OK, and you're back inside Photoshop with two versions of the same image (perfectly aligned). Now mask out the water.
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7323/smart4.jpg
Step 10: Using a black brush at 100% opacity, paint onto the layer mask for Layer 1 (the selected bird layer on top of the stack) around the edges of the bird where ever you see water that looks too bright. Don't let your brush go any farther onto the bird than necessary, because you'll reveal the dark version of the bird underneath.
Thanks for the tip David! You should now have an HDR image with no evidence of PS work, even around difficult-to-select areas. This technique can help you otherwise-good images with significant exposure problems that would have ended up in the dumpster. This technique has many other uses too. Have fun with it!
