Can This Image Be Saved?

[Wendy Kates]

This male, ruby-throated hummingbird was hovering near my nectar feeder, which was hanging in front of the lattice-work of my backyard wooden fence. So the background is less than perfect. Some of the bird's head feathers are disheveled, and the wings aren't in total focus either. But the rest of it is pretty sharp, and the colors are beautiful. I tried making a more uniform background by painting the entire background the beige color of the fence, but I ended up ruining the edges of the wings. (And, despite all of Diane's excellent advice, I hadn't used layers so I couldn't correct it. Not going to make that mistake again! The only way to salvage that image is to put it through Topaz Simplify, turn it into a painting, and post it in OOTB.) So, my question is: is the image of the bird good enough to spend the time trying to make the background more uniform? And what is the best way to make the background uniform? Thanks for any comments / critiques you have. By the way, I have since moved the feeder to a spot in front of some trees.
Canon 7D
300mm f/4
f/4, 1/1200s, ISO 400
Cropped to about 25% of original image, NR on background with Nik Dfine, Unsharp mask.

[Loi Nguyen]

HI Wendy, I'm sorry, but I don't think you can "save' an image with significant painting/post processing. Better invest your time in setting up the feeder in a good location with good light and good background :) Loi

[Diane Miller]

Your best shot is to use Topaz ReMask to select the bird and put it on a different BG. With care, it can select soft edges, but it isn't easy. I have to agree with Loi -- work on shooting a better one! Hummingbirds are willing subjects and you can get very close to them. They know who fills the feeder!

A crop to 25% of the original just isn't going to give enough image quality, either. This has the look of too much noise reduction on the bird, but maybe it's just poor focus and a big crop. You'll want a lot more depth of field than f/4, and very careful focus. It will take a lot of shots to get a few good ones.

[keith mitchell]

Hello Wendy, the bird itself looks ok to me, the blurred wings add to the image for me, agree with the others re the bg,it's worth a bit of time studying the birds behaviour, I tried to photograph these in Tobago so I sympathise with your problems.

Regards Keith.

[Arthur Morris]

Good advice by Loi. In addition to considering a better background by re-positioning the feeder you need to also be concerned with light angle.... The light in your image is well from the right and from behind the bird. Well less than ideal. Nice gorget and sharp.

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks, Artie. Just for my own education, what is it about the image that suggests that the light is coming from behind the bird?

[Bill Jobes]

Wendy, I think this is a lovely flight image, and that it can be 'saved.'

Coming from a career in television news, I'd often place interview subjects against a solid black background. One which we called 'limbo' in industry jargon.

So rather than see you toss the image, I thought I'd take a shot, a quick one to be sure, at trying to rescue it. I spent only a few minutes on the edit.

I did this in CS 6 by selecting the bird, doing an inverse selection, filling in the background with black, and coming as close as possible to the bird's outline with the rather crude clone sample tool.

It may not be perfect, but it's been 'saved' to look at again another day.

- Bill

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks, Artie. Just for my own education, what is it about the image that suggests that the light is coming from behind the bird?

YAW. The shadow on the bird's cheek indicates that the light is coming at least from slightly behind the bird. The trick is to have your shadow pointing at the subject for most front-lit nature photography. Good luck and thanks for your membership support.

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks for your encouragement and your RP, Bill. In the same vein, I am posting my original "correction" of the image, in which as I mentioned in my initial post I painted the entire background with one of the beige colors from the fence. I also cloned back some of the bird (ie., the wings).

[Svante Larsson]

All advice above makes a lot of sense. I think shooting hummers is great fun and if you have a feeder and get hummers regularly I would start thinking about getting a flash or two (off-camera) possibly together with an artificial background.

[Diane Miller]

I'm only on my iPhone at the moment so can't evaluate images very critically, but I like the beige BG -- it is a pleasing color for the bird. I can't tell about the quality of the cutout but I suspect it would take one of the sophisticated programs to manage the soft edges of the wings. (But maybe you said how you did it -- if I try to look back at your reply I may loose what I've written here.). I love Topaz ReMask. Not completely intuitive but they have a good tutorial.

When I'm substituting a BG I try to create a little texture in it, using partial opacity cloning. And apologies if you did -- I can't see that much detail on the small screen here.

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks, Diane. I literally took a "hard" brush in PS and painted the whole background beige. I wasn't sure what to do about the wings. I don't have Topaz ReMask...only Topaz Simplify. I'm hoping ReMask gets one of Topaz' 50% discounts soon, but if it doesn't I'll spring for the full priced version! Creating more texture would help here...I had originally thought about adding a background texture to the image, and I still might.

[Arthur Morris]

The problems with such efforts is obviously dealing with the fine details in the feathers along the edge of the wings and body..... There is a way to do it in Photoshop but it is time consuming and I could never figure it out despite a personal lesson from Tim Grey....