Don Called It a Fish Eagle
The third image from a shoot at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area (about 90 miles east of Los Angeles).
Canon 1DX, 500/4 w/2X TC
1/2000, f/8, ISO 320.
Post processing
1. Lightroom: white balance, color calibration, sharpening
2. Color Efex Pro: Detail Extractor
3. Photoshop: color balance on background
4. Lightroom: 50% crop. Export.
Last edited by Jim Keener; 05-20-2014 at 12:52 AM. Reason: Remove errant image.
I love that stare, Jim! A nice shot, just like the previous - a keeper for sure!
I'd play with just a tad of mid tones to bring out the whites a little more. That might also get rid of a slight blue-ish cast in the whites.
Additional white balance work, darkened shadows, lightened mid tones. In Photoshop I blurred the background a bit.
I am most grateful for all the comments. You are helping me achieve two goals: produce a better image and learn more about post processing.
Yes, nice! This may be one where an additional sharpening step on the JPEG might be worthwhile.
Thanks, Diane. I used the unsharp mask in Photoshop's default settings. Is there a better solution?
This is much sharper -- looks great. But with sharpening I wouldn't just accept default settings unless they just happened to look right. The best parameters vary hugely according to image size (pixel dimensions) and level of detail.
I like Smart Sharpen with the Lens Blur choice -- it has newer and more sophisticated algorithms than USM. The default there, Gaussian Blur, is said to be the same as USM. But I'd try both and see what I like best for any image.
The raw file can be slightly sharpened, above the default, in CRaw / LR, but be very careful cementing sharpening into the rasterized (converted to pixels) file. Likewise for sharpening the master file in PS. Best to sharpen a derivative file after resizing for some output.
I am very pleased to learn this. The process here has served me very well. I feel as if I've been through post processing boot camp. A lot remains to be learned, I know. I am grateful to all who responded.
Nice, Jim - it just touches the borderline of too-sharp IMHO so I wouldn't go any further than this. But maybe that's just me...Originally Posted by Jim Keener
Thanks for all your help, Tobie. I have a lot to learn and I'm enjoying learning.
We're in the same boat!
Nice shot Jim, Love the stare.
I really like your last repost and think the sharpening is about right. I would look at the composition as I think it would work well as a vertical crop rather then square by cropping some of the dead space on the left. With the bird looking virtually straight on I think it would work even if it was in the centre of the image.
Hello Iain. Thanks for taking the time to comment. Funny. I was thinking last night that the bird would make a better symmetrical image than off to the side. And I'll try that both in a vertical and square format. The reason I created the square format is for social media. It is likely that I will want to create different formats in the future based on display.
Last edited by Jim Keener; 05-23-2014 at 11:20 AM. Reason: Add images.
I definitely prefere the first of these two resposts out of all the posts. For me it brings the focus straight onto the birds stare. If it is looking to one side like your last post then it is good to have some space for it to look into.
You really have a great image here. Well done.
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