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Judy, this is awesome!! I love the pose, detail and colors.
If it were in Avian someone would comment on the slight halo on the bottom of the perch, to the left of the bird, but since it's here, I won't. 
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Lifetime Member
Judy,
Greetings. I like the bright colors, bg palette and painterly look. This is a Ruby-throated? I like the little feet and the throat really does pop. Thanks for posting.
Cheers,
-Michael-
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The halo is actually on the branch in the original, just the lighting. However I was working on the image so I tried to clone it out a bit. I have a re-do I will post. It looked too blue to me and I moved the sig to the branch and I changed textures. I am going to print this on cards to sell, will have to do a test print to see how the color and brightness looks.
Originally Posted by
Diane Miller
Judy, this is awesome!! I love the pose, detail and colors.
If it were in Avian someone would comment on the slight halo on the bottom of the perch, to the left of the bird, but since it's here, I won't.
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Thanks Michael. Yes it's a ruby-throated hummer. They are the only native ones east of the MS River although we do have a few rufous mainly in winter and other rare winter visitors from the west have been seen. I have never seen any of them.
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I like both the original and the re-post. Putting your signature on the branch was a great idea.
The colors -- including the background -- are wonderful, and both the branch and bill are strong primary diagonals. Very nicely composed, too.
Which Snap Art did you use?
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Thanks Kerry. I think it was Oil Paint but I tried so many I'm not 100% sure, but that is the one I like generally like best and I slid it it way over toward realistic so it wouldn't be "blurry". Then I used Adjust to add some detail and color back. Using Clean first removed noise in the sky, used fairly lightly. I made that with the 20D I think and I guess it was noisier than newer models plus I underexposed it a bit, like 2/3 of a stop. BTW the background was the windshield of my hubby's big red van! Glad I was able to crop out the rest of the van!
Last edited by Judy Howle; 11-13-2013 at 07:06 PM.
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I like the OP, very well done, and one of the few times that I like that canvas type look of the BG.
Beautiful shot, bird, and treatment.
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Post a Thank You. - 1 Thanks
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Apologies to Dennis who I called Kerry!
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Love the contrast of the rich red of the hummer with the soft blues and greens of the background. Beautiful image.
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Post a Thank You. - 1 Thanks
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This is beautiful! Wonderful composition and great saturated colors. I prefer the OP with those more saturated colors. This will make a beautiful note card!
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Great photo, great processing, great color. I like how the strong diagonal line of the branch is repeated in the background and by the position of the Hummer's head and beak. A very strong image. Love the details on the throat. I prefer the OP. Fantastic work.
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Thanks everyone. I guess the OP is the viewer's choice then. It looks like it has a blue cast on my monitor but it needs calibrating. I'll do that before I print one.
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A test print is always in order, anyway. Printing has a lot of pitfalls.
Since you're going to use it as a card, I'd print both of your versions and evaluate them that way. The histogram is considerably to the dark side in the original -- the RP has better mid-tones and the whites are nicely neutral. The colors on the RP look fine to me but you could try saturating it -- that seems to be what people are responding to. If you print on a matte paper you'll get subdued saturation anyway -- you can't ever get blacks as rich as on a glossy paper, or match the stained-glass look of a monitor, so contrast (which equals saturation) will always be lower on matte stocks.
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Thanks Diane, I appreciate your appraisal and suggestions. I do print on Red River matte card stock. I think I used color balance and a curves adj. layer with the "lighter" preset on the repost. And knowing they always print darker than they look on screen, I thought the tones on the repost would be about right. I will print both but lighten the first one and try to get rid of the color cast. I can open it in the new camera raw filter in Ps CC which I forgot about when I re-worked it. Should be able to correct the color cast and brighten the exposure there probably better than I did here.
Originally Posted by
Diane Miller
A test print is always in order, anyway. Printing has a lot of pitfalls.
Since you're going to use it as a card, I'd print both of your versions and evaluate them that way. The histogram is considerably to the dark side in the original -- the RP has better mid-tones and the whites are nicely neutral. The colors on the RP look fine to me but you could try saturating it -- that seems to be what people are responding to. If you print on a matte paper you'll get subdued saturation anyway -- you can't ever get blacks as rich as on a glossy paper, or match the stained-glass look of a monitor, so contrast (which equals saturation) will always be lower on matte stocks.
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Or, unless you did a ton of work you don't want to have to do again, even better to go back and rework the RAW file -- that may not be a critical difference but would give you the best tonalities, especially since you said you had to boost exposure. The mantra of ETTR (expose to the right, pushing the histogram as high as you can without blowing out highlights) will minimize noise. You can reduce exposure in RAW conversion with much better results than you can increase it.
If you're consistently getting prints that are too dark, that's commonly an issue with a monitor that's too bright -- maybe why your histogram looks pretty biased to the dark on the OP -- the image may look fine on-screen. That can be a problem with the newer high-contrast "bright" monitors.
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The original raw conversion was a challenge because the whites and gorget reds were pretty light but not totally blown, and the red was an orangey ugly color, and the rest too dark as I underexposed 2/3 of a stop to not blow them. I managed to get it fairly well adjusted but the red was still ugly and too bright so I put one of the duplicate filtered layers in color burn mode which made the red feathers look a whole lot better but darkened the rest. I think I masked it, though maybe not 100%. I have all the layers in one file including the lighter version of the repost so I can tweak many layers as needed or even blend the 2 versions and hopefully get one that is "just right". I made it with the 20D and it was not nearly as good with color as the later model Canons.
I have a Huey calibrator but haven't done it in a long time. I can usually look at the one on screen and judge how light it needs to be to print correctly and do a test print. Maybe I can do a better job with the Huey when I do it again and darken it more. I find printing extremely nerve wracking and tend to put it off as long as possible. 
Originally Posted by
Diane Miller
Or, unless you did a ton of work you don't want to have to do again, even better to go back and rework the RAW file -- that may not be a critical difference but would give you the best tonalities, especially since you said you had to boost exposure. The mantra of ETTR (expose to the right, pushing the histogram as high as you can without blowing out highlights) will minimize noise. You can reduce exposure in RAW conversion with much better results than you can increase it.
If you're consistently getting prints that are too dark, that's commonly an issue with a monitor that's too bright -- maybe why your histogram looks pretty biased to the dark on the OP -- the image may look fine on-screen. That can be a problem with the newer high-contrast "bright" monitors.
Last edited by Judy Howle; 11-17-2013 at 12:50 AM.
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Congratulations. Well deserved first place!
Judy Howle thanked for this post
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