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Thread: dark eyed junco

  1. #1
    Ron Conlon
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    Default dark eyed junco

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    Taken near a feeder at the local nature center Christmas day. It was cold, but the weather and the date minimized the disturbances. The birds had a terrific day.

    1/500s ISO 800 f/5.6 400mm T2i
    Sharpening to the face and some branches removed.
    Last edited by Ron Conlon; 12-27-2013 at 06:33 PM.

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    This is very nice Ron. The design is simple and effective and I like the pose and the eye is drawn very effectively to the face of the bird. I would try a few things to further optimize the image. I would recrop with a little less space below, a little more above, and some to the right to give the subject more breathing room. I would also lighten-up the subject to reveal the feather detail and beautiful, subtle colours. I tried the mid-tone slider in Levels and it worked a treat. I have a calibrated display and if yours isn't, and it's running too bright, your images will look dark on a calibrated monitor. Finally I would not hesitate to sharpen the body feathers as well as the face.

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    I agree with everything John has to say, and I would also consider bumping the contrast or the blacks a little on the bird. Oh and nice work in a pretty tough lighting condition.

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    Good advice above -- it does feel crowded on the right -- easy to add canvas there is this isn't a crop from the original.

    A little more detail would be a nice touch to a nice image. Dark-eyed Juncos are cute and sweet -- we have a lot of them here and one got into the house one day, and it actually let me pick it up (after I promised not to hurt it) and carry it outside.

    Possibly contrast or a Curve would do it, or Nik's Detail Extractor.

  5. #5
    Ron Conlon
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    Thanks for your helpful critiques.

    Rather than add more canvas, I changed the ratio and cut some from the bottom. While there may not be as much space around the bird as we would like, I think it addresses the imbalance that we were feeling.
    I used a luminosity curve to bring some more range into the feathers, and moved up the black end with levels.
    Lastly, a little more sharpening to the wing to address some softness there.

    Thanks!

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    Nice job Ron but for my taste anyway, the subject is still too dark. I think partly the issue is the very light BG so as you view the image, your pupil closes and the bird appears darker than it would on a darker BG. If you "moved the black end up" in levels, that will make the dark tones darker of course but maybe you needed to so this after the "luminosity curve (whatever that is, sorry not sure precisely). In the posted jpeg you already have pixels almost all the way to the left-dark side so don't see the need to move the shadows slider at least on the original post. I brought the jpeg into Ps and adjusted the mid-tone slider in Levels just a little to the left and that's all it took to brighten things up a little.

  7. #7
    Ron Conlon
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    I think that the posts already present the bird as lighter than perceived in real life (acknowledging that the appearance is affected by the white background--in both real life and photo), so my taste was to not lighten any further. Thanks.

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    Ron- I don't give up easily, even when a line in the sand is drawn!

    Your subject is underexposed. It is irrelevant how your eyes saw it. Perhaps your eyes saw the bird as a silhouette against the white BG and that would be one option to render the image. However, if you want to show detail in the subject it needs to be lit well or you need to make some adjustments in post-processing. You do not give complete exposure techs (manual vs. auto, if latter any compensation?) so I have to guess that the very bright BG has caused underexposure in the dark subject. With a BG like this I would probably have run a 1.5-2-stop over what the meter said if using auto-exposure, maybe more as you can always bring the exposure back some with no ill effects. In reality, I would have been set to manual and just exposed for the subject.

    I took a look at the image again and what was bugging me most was the dark face. So, in the interests of retaining your dark junco I have just dodged the face a little here. I think it makes a positive difference.

  9. #9
    Ron Conlon
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    I wasn't looking to end the discussion by any means. Also, in my limited experience I have found that stretching parts of the histogram in high key photos is rarely satisfactory. Perhaps there is room for a stretch here, and I was too conservative.
    Exposure was manual.
    The raw file opened in Photoshop with the histograms pasted on top of the pic are shown. I am interested to know how you would have processed it.

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    Hi Ron- Obviously the majority of the subject pixels (and the branches) produce that little hump in histogram at the left, and it's pretty far to the left. Down there you are collecting relatively few photons in the exposure and the way noise scales with the signal, the ratio of signal to noise is going to be much lower than if the hump were farther to the right. In this case I would have exposed so that the subject pixels were much farther over to the right and of course would have sacrificed the BG in doing so. Later I might then bring the subject exposure down some.

    As for processing, I guess the my repost is pretty much where I might want to be, although I may have added a bit more light to the whole bird than that.

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    BPN Member Sandy Witvoet's Avatar
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    Just a quick comment.... unless this Junco is a female, Ron's exposure looks best to me. These birds (males) are quite dark, and never appear to be brown. The top of the head seems to be a bit OOF. Perhaps a bit of work to the eye area may be something that's needed. Not sure what to do with the "crest" area. Good capture of a really super little bird!
    www.mibirdingnetwork.com .... A place for bird and nature lovers in the Great Lakes area.

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    A dark bird against a white BG (and a white bird against a dark BG) is a difficult subject to present to the viewer. As said above, the white BG does make the viewer squint, and makes the bird appear to lose tonal detail. Sometimes what works for a pleasing image may not be to make the bird as black or white as it actually was. Out in the sun, even the dark head of this little guy could show some tonal detail, as it does even in your OP.

    One issue here is that you have a "white" BG but you have sacrificed a little tonal range by not taking it all the way to white. There is no detail in it so I would push the histogram further to the right -- this is one case where blowing out the whites is OK because there is no detail there. I wouldn't go very far, but you can gain a little more contrast on the bird that way. (Just be careful of the light feathers on the breast.)

    But I think the main issue here is local contrast. I ran Nik's Detail Extractor and brought out a little more detail in the bird. Then the mid-tones could be darkened if you wish. The difference is subtle and I'm not sure how well it will show here. Stacking the two and toggling the visibility of the top layer shows it better.

  13. #13
    Ron Conlon
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    John--I'm surprised that you would have exposed it even longer--would others do the same?
    I understand that with digital it is better to expose longer and then pull it back in post because of noise, but even with no pixels for a stretch of the dark end of the histogram you would push it further? Pulling things out of the top end also has to create issues in addition to loss at the top end, I would think.
    Last edited by Ron Conlon; 12-29-2013 at 06:35 PM.

  14. #14
    Ron Conlon
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    Sandy--thanks, I didn't make it explicit, but yes, it is (to the best of my recollection) the (darker) male. Sex change by photoshop?

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    The lightest tones of the subject on the upper breast and belly are running about 200, 200, 200 (RGB) and are located about 1/5 down the histogram. Therefore you could move the subject's exposure significantly to the right without overcooking these light tones. The BG is close to 255, 255, 255 and a better exposure on the bird would blow these highlights, but I agree with Diane that with no detail there anyway, this is not a big concern.

    Ron- I have no clue what this means- "but even with no pixels for a stretch of the dark end of the histogram you would push it further?"

  16. #16
    Ron Conlon
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    Quote Originally Posted by John Chardine View Post
    The lightest tones of the subject on the upper breast and belly are running about 200, 200, 200 (RGB) and are located about 1/5 down the histogram. Therefore you could move the subject's exposure significantly to the right without overcooking these light tones. The BG is close to 255, 255, 255 and a better exposure on the bird would blow these highlights, but I agree with Diane that with no detail there anyway, this is not a big concern.

    Ron- I have no clue what this means- "but even with no pixels for a stretch of the dark end of the histogram you would push it further?"
    In Adobe Camera Raw, a half stop increase in exposure brings the whites of the belly to about the 235's in RGB, so it could have been exposed half a stop more in my mind--I was happy to get the exposure as close as I did, shooting both birds on the ground against the snow, and birds on branches against a backdrop of leaves. All the same, do you think the ideal exposure for the bird would have been +1/2 stop, or even more?

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    John asked me to take a look at this bird for the age/sex part of this discussion. I don't believe you can add this kind of brownish tan to the tertial edges, mantle, flanks, head tips, and breast tips through any amount of exposure change. This bird has brownish tan appearing in nearly every place where it also has gray, and even in places where there is little to no gray like the mantle and lower flanks. As a result I'm pretty certain it's an immature bird.

    Looking at how much brownish coloration there is and fairly pale gray in the breast and flanks compared to the face, even in the original post, I'd lean towards calling this bird an immature female.

  18. #18
    Ron Conlon
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Guris View Post
    John asked me to take a look at this bird for the age/sex part of this discussion. I don't believe you can add this kind of brownish tan to the tertial edges, mantle, flanks, head tips, and breast tips through any amount of exposure change. This bird has brownish tan appearing in nearly every place where it also has gray, and even in places where there is little to no gray like the mantle and lower flanks. As a result I'm pretty certain it's an immature bird.

    Looking at how much brownish coloration there is and fairly pale gray in the breast and flanks compared to the face, even in the original post, I'd lean towards calling this bird an immature female.
    Thanks, Paul, I didn't expect to be poring over my Sibley's on this one, but I believe you are correct--in my defense, I note that Sibley has the first year female with more slate/grey than the adult female. I learned something about the Junco!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Conlon View Post
    In Adobe Camera Raw, a half stop increase in exposure brings the whites of the belly to about the 235's in RGB, so it could have been exposed half a stop more in my mind--I was happy to get the exposure as close as I did, shooting both birds on the ground against the snow, and birds on branches against a backdrop of leaves. All the same, do you think the ideal exposure for the bird would have been +1/2 stop, or even more?
    Hi Ron- I think +1/2 stop works well and retains lots of detail in the belly feathers. I also added some to the shadows, and subtracted from the highlights and whites to tone down the BG a bit. At the end I lightly dodged the face area. The result looks good I think, and better matches the likely age/sex of the bird as per Paul (thanks for the input Paul).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Conlon View Post
    Thanks, Paul, I didn't expect to be poring over my Sibley's on this one, but I believe you are correct--in my defense, I note that Sibley has the first year female with more slate/grey than the adult female. I learned something about the Junco!
    Even the common species are more complicated than most people realize. If you ever want an eye opener into how complex and wonderful a common species can be, read about the pairing and mating strategies of the white-striped and tan-striped morphs of White-throated Sparrows. It's fascinating. Here's a good non-scientific synopsis for those of us who aren't biologists:

    http://birdingblogs.com/2011/grrlsci...-to-have-sexes

  21. #21
    Ron Conlon
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Guris View Post
    Even the common species are more complicated than most people realize. If you ever want an eye opener into how complex and wonderful a common species can be, read about the pairing and mating strategies of the white-striped and tan-striped morphs of White-throated Sparrows. It's fascinating. Here's a good non-scientific synopsis for those of us who aren't biologists:

    http://birdingblogs.com/2011/grrlsci...-to-have-sexes
    Very cool! Thanks. I find the biology and photography more interesting than the strict birding side of this, and it probably shows in my several (2) misidentifications among my few (3) posts. With any luck I will improve my id's in spite of myself by sheer persistence. Thanks for putting up with me.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Conlon View Post
    Very cool! Thanks. I find the biology and photography more interesting than the strict birding side of this, and it probably shows in my several (2) misidentifications among my few (3) posts. With any luck I will improve my id's in spite of myself by sheer persistence. Thanks for putting up with me.
    Don't be too hard on yourself. I've been at this for 40 years and have taken it very seriously. Yesterday on a Christmas Bird Count I called a flyby bird a Kingfisher as it zipped behind a few little scrubby trees. When it came out the other side, it had magically turned into a Hooded Merganser.

    The moral of this story? Hooded Mergansers like to perch in cedars and Kingfishers like to steal their perches.

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    First, my disclaimer: I feel like I'm much more of a learner than a teacher. That said, in the spirit of this forum's encouragement of participants to suggest advice as well as asking for it, I submit the following as a possible improved image. In Photoshop, I added canvas to the top and right of the image and recropped. Then, in LightRoom, increased the exposure on the Junco by increasing the "Shadows" slider. The head still seemed too dark, so I used the adjustment brush to lighten it. Finally, since the background appeared too bright, I added some very highly feathered vignetting to focus the viewer's attention on the bird.

    ...Jerry
    Last edited by Jerry amEnde; 01-05-2014 at 07:49 AM.

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    I like this crop, and I think this is the sort of thing that suits ETL very well. We all learn from things like this, and quite independently of whether we "agree" with the final outcome or not. And of course those steps are best done on the RAW file in LR before it ever goes into PS.

    I see so many suggestions in other forums here for adjustments to an image in PS using methods for major tonal changes such as shadow and highlight balance (using things like luminosity masks) when the suggestion should have been to go back to the RAW file and do things there. There is not enough appreciation of what a RAW converter can do these days.

    I see some posterization in the BG, wich would be from working with the 8 bit JPEG -- darken the image and increase contrast you'll see it. That wouldn't happen nearly as soon working with the high bit image in RAW.

    The interesting thing about posterization is that you can't clone it out. There just aren't enough tonal steps in the very subtle gradient in the BG. (You could convert to 16 bit and do a little better with a soft edged brush, but then you'd just have to go back to 8 bit for the RP and the posterization would be broken up into smaller pieces, thus less obvious.

  25. #25
    Ron Conlon
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    Thanks to everyone's input, this has been a tremendous learning experience.

    I agree with Diane that the other contributors are working at a disadvantage not having access to the RAW file, so I have taken the liberty of posting yet another version, starting from scratch.

    I boosted exposure 0.6 stops in ACR, cloned out some branches in PS, added canvas to the left, cropped to 3:2, extracted more range from the dark end with a reverse S curves luminosity layer at ~25% opacity, readjusted slightly with a levels layer and selectively sharpened the bird. What do you think?

    I realized in processing this once again, that even though the bird has a large BG of near white all around it, the eye sees the bird (in the same photo) as darker or lighter depending on whether the surround outside the photo provided on the monitor by PS or Bridge or ACR is black, white, dark grey or light grey. When processing for BPN, I will make sure to set my software to the dark background used on BPN.

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    I think you got a great result here and really like how the eye stands out now. You could probably go a little darker overall if you wanted, but it's fine this way, to me.

    I wonder if, instead of the reverse S-curve in PS, you couldn't have gotten an equal or better lowering of contrast in ACR with the Shadows and Highlights sliders (assuming you have v7 or later with the new Process 2012 sliders.) It's usually successful to increase contrast in PS but lowering it can be much more problematic. It's something I prefer to do in RAW as much as possible. But after a ot of cloning I wouldn't fault anyone for doing some slight adjustments in PS, with adjustment layers and a 16-bit image.

    And a side note: there are several "skins" that people can choose here, and some do have lighter BGs -- see the LL of each screen. You can change them on the fly.
    Last edited by Diane Miller; 01-06-2014 at 07:27 PM.

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    I like the end-result a lot too. Well done.

    I agree Diane, all this is best done on the raw file during raw processing rather than later on in Photoshop (I know you have mentioned it in other threads). People seem to want to get out of ACR quickly, and into Photoshop, but ACR is where it's at! The real beauty of Lightroom is that you are essentially always in ACR, working on your raw files. That's one of the reasons I like it so much.

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    Absolutely!! And it is completely non-destructive,with an amazing ability to recover highlight and shadow detail. And you are working in 12 or 14 bits, with all the tonal range your camera captured, as well as the full color gamut. I wonder how many people are still coming into PS as 8 bits? That would account for the comments I sometimes see here about posterization in BGs with soft gradients.

    LRs Develop module is just a different interface to ACR -- same engine behind the scenes.

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