I'm not sure if this is a juvenile Mallard, or a domestic mix. He's sitting on the edge of a spillway, shot taken from an observation platform. (prone position). Would like to have gotten a shot from below the platform but he swam off as I was relocating.
Tried out a new workflow, instead of setting DPP to neutral (0's) and processing via LR5 and Denoise, I went with the pre-set NR, USM 3,1,2 and Shadow tweaks. I then transferred the TIFF to LR5 for further adjustment tweaks, masked in additional NR on the blue area, selective sharpening on the head and cropped. Output sharpened the Jpeg. C+C welcomed and appreciated, thanks for looking.
This is a very pleasing image! I love the gentle water, and how the water is just transparent enough to see the duck's feet. The pose is perfect, and I like seeing the curled tail. I think I'd consider a tad off of the top to tighten it up just a tad.
A lovely drake too, but perhaps a bit of a hybrid as you point out as this one has no "chestnut" colouring on its chest nor a white collar. Your processing looks good so the new method seems like a good one. Love the running water leaving some trails around and behind the feet. Very neat effect.
Thanks for the responses, very much appreciated. The smooth blue bg and water effects as it flowed over the spillway are what initially caught my eye at the time.
After looking at it some more, I decided to warm it a couple of points Y/R and apply minor HSL tweaks to the orange and yellow channels. I feel this helps to separate the bird from the bg a little bit more.
Marina as per your suggestion I took a small bit off the top, also added space forward the duck and flipped the image 180*.
Daniel-I always have trouble with sharpening halos on high contrast edges when using DPP, even though I feel fine details look a little better than other methods I've tried.
Last edited by Randall Farhy; 03-11-2014 at 07:30 AM.