Yearbook Picture

Not enough to be called filter abuse, but more than I usually do. This young Heron posed for his high school yearbook pic for me. I took him to Topaz Adjust to beef up the detail and then used a plugin from Flaming Pear called Aetherize to soften and put a glow on that image. Seems like a contradiction in effort, but with a bit of work I liked the final result. Finally I did a mask to bring back a bit of sharpness to the eye area. Seems really subtle to me for all that work and soft and subtle hasn't been my strong suit. :( New directions! I really liked the way the aetherize manipulated the background. What do you all think?

Dave, Very nice young Heron and sharp eye. I do wish it were turned a bit more towards us or there was a bit more room on the left to give the appearance that the bird is engaged in the scene. I like the effect of the filters. I think the strong details play well off the softness and the BG colors are gorgeous. I might try to eliminate the halo around the bird if it were mine. Nice work and good to see you stepping a little out of the norm.:)

Agree with Denise but I also like your BG - I'm just wondering what it would look like when printed. ??? I also think you could tone down the yellow near the eye just a tiny bit so it isn't so "electric". I do really like the final effect on the bird as well - it softened his feathers nicely and you painted back in a nice amount of detail.

Dave, good for you to push yourself out of your "box" and try some new techniques. I think this works really well. There are many different ways to use the combination of detail and blur and it's fun and educational to give them a try! I think the bg works fine but I would be tempted to do something with those green highlight areas.

Very nice composition, Dave. Agree with Denise on the space in from the bird. Love the colors and soft smooth texture to the image. Nicely done.

Nice image and application, Dave.

Like the soft with the focused eye.

I love the soft tones and the soft feathers. As always, a good head angle here would have yielded a better final image. I am not a fan of the big halo.

Thank you everyone for the feedback on this.. Your honest and constructive comments will only help me grow and improve. As I said before this is a bit of a different approach for me and I certainly appreciate the guidance. I think the halo may have crept in during the Topaz portion and after viewing it a bit more,I agree it needs to go. I have a series of this bird so maybe I'll just start again and try to find a better HA. Thanks again to everyone.

Super Dave. Folks who look at critiques with an open mind and heart as you do will improve quickly. The always-defensive folks not so quickly....