Sony A900~Sony 500 F4 G~Sony 1.4x~ISO 1000~F8~1/1600 sec~manual exposure~hand-held~Texas City Dike~12-19-2012-CS6 /ACR
I try to avoid messy backgrounds, but sometmes this can be difficult. I selected the bird (quick selection tool) and blurred the BG, and there was clone work. Anyone see errors? I would not be surprised. I wish the feet were more visible, but I couldn't get a better angle. Compositionally it might have been better if the bird was right in the frame, since the head and bill, face that way. Comments and critique welcomed. regards~Bill
Lovely clear shot, Bill. Not seeing any errors in your PP work - although my experience in this field is very limited. Maybe the piece of debris behind the bird's right leg could be removed. Compositionally, you're right with your suggestion with the bird being further right in the frame, but I understand how it can be in the field! Exposure is perfect, I love the nice warm lighting.
Love the pose, and love the lighting! Looks a bit oversharpened (the fringe on the beak - maybe cure by way of masking?). The background blue looks like is mostly worked, except the right lower corner looks llike the rocks are peering through fog. You would do better to leave these as a framing compositional element, or patch tool them out. I would do the latter... and you would improve this image a lot by grabbing the patch tool and nuking the scattered rocks and shells, then the close tool to remove the stuff from behind the leg. Clone out the random OOF highlights. And, I would probably use a slightly stronger blur, but do beware strong blurs and maddening mach lines!!! (they've gotten me before, if you can tell...).
This is a very nice image, and is totally worth the time and effort to improve it.
You have a lovely preening pose here, Bill, with good exposure and colors. I think you have a splendid BG and your FG is actually quite interesting, although the clump in the middle is a bit distracting. What stands out to me here is the halo around some of the bird, esp evident in the beak area. You may need to revisit your sharpening. While I would have preferred seeing the bird in the right side of the frame with this particular pose, I don't find this particular framing a problem except that I would like to see some more room esp on the top.
It's nice to get close up photos, but there are times that it's nice to zoom out and look for the environmental frame which you may have been able to do here with the interesting environmental elements.
Beautiful bird with a nice pose the opportunity here is more space (kinda tight) and work the eye; it has multiple catch lights and looks grainy (which can be caused by excessive sharpening).. Just curious, what WB do you use, seems a tad warm as well. Good comments above keep em coming.
Really appreciate the time spend on C&C on this one. I didn't spend much time on processing, thinking that my time would be better spent on other images that were less problematic. About the background; a few days ago Tony Whitehead (over at Avian) mentioned that he recently discovered he could use Nik Color Efex Pro's tonal contrast to blur backgrounds, using the preset's negative settings, and he was impressed with the results. This image was a test run using the technique and it worked pretty well.
Faraaz; good points and I'm glad to see you participating!
Chris; excellent detailed explanation of what you would do and you have convinced me it is "totally worth the time and effort to improve it". Thanks. About the sharpening halo;I was not paying attention, and I could have avoided it by using the right radius in smart sharpen. Otherwise, I am not sure the image is oversharpened.
Marina; covered the halo with Chris, and I'm glad you don't find the subject position too problematic.
I'm in total agreement with additional shots that encompass more of the environment, and I did that too. I got lucky and managed to get several hundred shots of the curlew, a bird I don't see often, over about 30 minute period. Different angles, distances, backgrounds/foregrounds, etc. Anyway, the background where the curlew was preening was very distracting, and it seemed a perfect sample to test Tony's technique.
Jeff; good observations, and the eye does need work!
I set the WB in ACR, and the warmth of the image could just be my personal taste. As far as WB in camera; honestly, I am not that concerned with getting the right camera WB, since all it is is a few lines of code in the RAW file and is so easy to change later. I'm not saying I never set it, usually do when it is overcast (cloudy +2), but if I forget, I don't sweat it. Just one less thing to worry about!
regards~Bill
Last edited by WIlliam Maroldo; 01-03-2013 at 02:39 AM.
Hi Bill- Excellent comments above. The over-sharpening stands out for me. Is this Déjà vu or did we discuss your sharpening techs a while ago? Could you run through how you sharpened this image and when in the workflow. Thanks.
Hi John. I don't recall a sharpening discussion, but I've been posting here a long time and it is quite possible. Only sharpening was after resizing to web size. However, when I'm in a hurry, as I was here, I use a custom action to both downsize and sharpen in one. Obviously this was not a good idea here, since the sharpening needed varies depending on the image. If I have plenty of time I don't use the action, and do the steps, but it is simply one click to do the action, and one to undo if it doesn't seem to work right. The good thing here is I can see the exact sharpening settings, since I can read the action. Smart Sharpen, Amt; 177%, radius 6.4 px, gaussian blur, and the rest default.
The mistake here is relying on the action.
I have posted the image before doing anything, no PS adjustment, etc.,only resizing. I was going to say no sharpening, but I did choose bicubic sharpening as resampling. Does that count as sharpening? By the way there was no sharpening or NR in ACR. This image also shows the original background, which might be usefull, and I was wondering is it as bad as I thought?
Thanks~Bill
Last edited by WIlliam Maroldo; 01-03-2013 at 03:53 PM.
That explains it Bill. First, the Remove Gaussian blur option in Smart Sharpen is, according to Adobe, the same as Unsharp Mask. To get the added benefit of Smart sharpen you should use the Lens blur option, which apparently is more of a true sharpening action. Either way, 177%/6.4px is a MASSIVE amount of sharpening for any sized image, let alone one resampled for BPN. I tried the same techs on your unsharpened repost and the result is not like yours at all. Are you sure your action is using 177%/6.4px?
For a sharp image out of the camera, I usually find that Smart sharpen Remove Lens blur at 80%, 0.3px works very well.
John, I checked the action again. Should have read 0.4 on the radius, not 6.4! Big difference! I did not know about using Lens blur (and not Remove Gaussian blur), and I really appreciate you pointing this out. This will prove most useful. regards~Bill
OK Bill, makes sense. I still think the 177% amount is causing over-sharpening. Here's a version using Smart sharpen Remove Lens blur @ 80%/0.3px. Also added some canvas quickly to the top. Also toned down the highlights in the bird some (maybe too much but it was all quick).
The bottom line with sharpening is to "go by the numbers" only as a guide and to examine the effect of sharpening at 100% (which Photoshop allows you to do by default) to make sure it looks right to you. The problem is that what is right to one person is not to another, and even different displays make images looks sharper than others.
My favourite images are those that have an "easy", unforced" sharpness.
Preening Long-billed Curlew
