You had me spoiled -- I'd love to see another panel with the original appearance in LR and metadata, and then a separate panel (composited with that would be great) with the settings that gave you the above image. That's a great way to evaluate where you started and what you did!
My feeling on the image shown is that I'd like to see the bird and trees a little lighter, but not being able to see where you started, I can't be sure it would work well. I'm wondering about going negative on the Shadows and Blacks sliders... But it does look like great sharpness. Obviously in that light you won't get a lot of detail in the bird itself. It is a dramatic presentation, though -- one not often shown here.
OK, I opened the image in PS. Created a mask of the bird with ReMask and duplicated and inverted the mask. Using the mask of the background I created a brightness adjustment layer and increased the contrast and decreased the brightness of the BG. Using the mask of the bird opened a Topaz Detail Filter and increasd the detail in the bird.
My taste would be not to go dark at all with the Shadows and Blacks, especially those on the bird. You can see on your histogram in pane 2 that there is a spike at the black end, but on the original histogram there is not. (Most of that is the tree but you have darkened the bird a lot, too. You could darken just the tree in PS if you wanted it that way.) Having block-up blacks is not always a bad thing, but it is generally better not to do it. On the other hand, most pictures do want a full range of contrast, so I'd think about trying to get the whites whiter, while holding or increasing detail, and maybe just squeaking the blacks down a tiny bit. Here's one idea. (I cropped a ittle from the left just so it would fit the size requirements here.)
This is a nice shot and you can't change the lighting too much -- it shows typical warm early or late light. The bird would be expected to be shaded and low contrast. You might bring a little more detail and contrast into it in PS. You can do things there that you can't in RAW conversion. The best thing in RAW is to get a good histogram with basic tonalities and color. Often that's enough.
We always have to balance what we see on or monitor with what the histogram says -- the histogram is right, the monitor may be off. I don't know if you have mentioned your setup -- do you see all the steps in the gray wedge that is at the bottom of each page here? Does your monitor change brightness as you tilt it up and down? If so, you need to stay at the 90-degree point for the most accurate view. Are you calibrated and profiled? That can dramatically change how dark tones appear.
Your last post came up while I was writing my reply above. You made an excellent improvement -- I'd forgotten that you used PS at that level. You did a very good job of "fill flash" on the bird. Just always examine things like that at 100% and watch for edge artifacts from the mask. Toggling the visibility of a layer is a great way to see what's there.
There is some noise in the bird -- you might try the same thing again with the lower contrast conversion I showed and compare the two. By bringing the image into PS with such dark tones, when you lighten them again you will bring out noise. You can successfully go from lighter to darker, but lightening darks will bring out noise.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 12-20-2013 at 10:53 AM.
Wadokahatchee Wetlands
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