House Finch

[David Kenny]

I took this photo earlier today of a female house finch. In LR I converted it to black and white and made some adjustments to the red, orange and green sliders until I got the look I wanted. I then adding a white vignette effect and did noise reduction. In photo shop I added the background to make it look like a canvas. My goal was to make it look like a drawing.

- Dave

[Diane Miller]

I like this a lot! It's hard to tell at this size, but I think I long to see a little sharper detail in the bird -- maybe a touch of Structure. And I'm wondering how it would look with just a little off the top. But those are very small things -- it's a wonderful image! I love how the perch fades away at the edges.

[Dennis Bishop]

I really like what you captured and how you processed it. With the nice range of tones, it works very well in black & white. The background and light vignette enhance the image. If you want to make images look even more like pencil sketches (or other forms of art), I highly recommend Alien Skin Snap Art, but I think what you have here is very well done.

[Randall Farhy]

Nicely rendered, it looks like a soft pencil drawing with very careful shading. As already mentioned, the tones of this image really work for this type of render. We don't often see bird images done this way, it's very refreshing. I too feel it could be cropped a little off the top, the branch feels like it's extended and makes the eye wander just a bit. Also, there seems to be something going on with the top of the branch that's not consistent with the rest of the image. I'm not sure what's causing it, but it appears as though something was added that just didn't match. Might be the interaction with your vignette or a hot spot of sunlight. That aside, an entire series of small birds in this style would make a grand presentation.

[David Kenny]

I stand corrected it is a male House Finch.

Diane - I actually used the clarity slider in LR3 to soften the bird a little to give it this look. I will try to add some clarity back to see how it looks.
Dennis - I will have to check out the Alien Skins website to see what they have

Randall - I believe the branch looks that way because the angle of it and way the light was hitting it. But the crop idea everyone is mentioning sounds like a good idea. I will process some more images in black and white in the future and see how they look as a series. I think this bird worked well because it had a lot of red in it and some great feather detail in its wings. These birds have been around more lately so hopefully I can post a solid image in eager to learn in color.

Thank you everyone for your comment.

[Diane Miller]

Interesting -- I didn't recognize it as negative Clarity, which I've never liked before. An alternative might be Nik Color Efex Pro's Classical Soft Focus.

Instead of adding some Clarity back, try anything you have that has a Structure slider. I like Nik's Viveza for that. Just mask it softly to the center of the bird, keeping the edges soft. But just an idea.

You have a wonderfully classic pose and perch here!

[Jackie Schuknecht]

This is a beautiful treatment. The lighter vignette looks to me like it could be bokeh and as Diane mentioned looks nice to fade the perch. Looks just like a pencil sketch to me.

[Cheryl Slechta]

David, I like it as presented - very, very nice. I like the soft treatment and I like using negative clarity on some images - it seems to work well here.