Three of these very large cuckoos have been flying over my house since October. One decided to land and make fun of me! They will return to Indonesia or PNG by March.
This is the second time I have loaded this image into the forum. The first time I ditched the post because of banding and patches in the blue. So I thought I would leave it here and ask how come? It's not present on the PSD file.
In ACR - whites, blacks and highlights all moved to the right.
In PSCS6 - A levels adjustment on the bird and a whole lot of branches painted and cloned out. This must be why the funny banding? A lot of noise under his rump. Lots of shadows from branches. Cropped to 45% of FF and resized.
I have also forgotten to run sharpening over it for presentation.
This has been a most frustrating PP...I'm sure it's not suppose to be this hard.
Canon 5D2
Lens - Canon 100-400mm L f4-5.6 USM @ 400mm
1/3000 sec @ f5.6
ISO 400
Hand held
I like your guy. And one of the things is that the talons, general body, and branches seem to be monochromatic. I wonder if he were trying to make a fashion statement.
I have no idea of how to suggest improvements. What you've already done is beyond what I know. But as a social aside, in the US, we would say, "passing gas" rather than "noise under his rump." Have I gone too far?
A very nice image! I'd consider cropping a little from the left as it is pretty empty there compared to the rest of the image. I love the tree in the BG and the branches. The bottom end of the branch he's sitting on got a little too smooth from the cloning, though.
The banding and "noise" are artifacts of trying to expand limited tonal levels in the sky. Did you bring it into PS as 8 bits? Go back and do it as 16 bit and you'll have more tonal overhead for any manipulation of the limited tones in the sky. (True banding can't be cloned out.)
If you did bring it in as 16 bits, go back to the raw file and do any sky darkening or gradations there, where you have a lot more tonal range to work with.
Once they are in an image, they get magnified when you go to a JPEG.
Something like cloning out a branch is devilishly hard when there is a gradient behind it that s hard to see. I'd try cloning the very ends and then seeing if the Patch tool or Healing Brush will match the gradient better. They should.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 01-02-2016 at 11:25 PM.
Jim...In Australia we call it "farting"! And thank you for your comments. I'm pleased you liked his talons. I had to rebuild one of them where an OOF stick passed through. (or maybe should I say, cut through)
Diane, Thank you as always. The image was in 16 bit so I fiddled some more. The banding is still there, but no so patchy. I've rebuilt the badly cloned branch, and it probably looks over done now? There were some lovely green colours on that branch..maybe it looks a little too strong. I've remembered to run "smart sharpen" over this post. And yes, there is something that looks like a dust bunny in the trees behind. Is there a reason I only see these problems when I put the image out there for the world to see?
I really like this image, but I think I'll put it in that "special" folder where the "almost, but not quite good enough" go.
Just a curious question...if this was (and it never will be) printed, would the banding persist?
I like your image a lot, but accept that through experience and knowledge, you know more than I do. But if I weren't satisfied that this belonged in a gallery, I would put it in a place, where next year, I would post "favorites" on my website. I did that this year with images that weren't necessarily good photographs, and that no one especially liked, but that meant something to me as a photographer. Thank you for helping me enjoy the learning process.
Branch and BG much improved! The banding probably would show in a print. You could print a small sample area where it showed to test it. But I think you have fixed it. There is only some very subtle banding -- it's mostly just cloning picking up an adjacent tone that wasn't adjacent enough, in an area of a gradation.
JPEGs are only 8 bit so you have fewer tonal levels than in your raw file. 8 bits has 256 levels per channel. 16 bits is 65,536, but most good cameras of the last few years "only" capture 14 bits or 16,384 per channel. So working on a "16 bit" image or a raw file gives you a lot of tonal overhead. The histogram will show banding at some point, with a "comb" appearance where there are gaps in tonalities, but I only see one very narrow gap in your first post.
But if I really push the sky as shown here, then you can barely see some. The bigger issue is the area of the cloning -- the Healing Brush will pick up more adjacent tones. And the darkening of sky areas near the dark areas is most commonly seen if the Highlights slider is pushed too far. There's a limit to tonal manipulations.
This trick with a temporary curves layer is a great way to spot subtle issues with cloning. And the reverse works to lighten dark areas for a close look.
Some very good advice there Diane. Thank you for taking the time to evaluate this. The temp curves layer really shows up those problem areas. I must admit, I didn't try the Healing brush either. You can see that I have really pushed those sliders. I do understand there could be some tonal manipulation limitation by going that far. This was a very good lesson.
Holy cow!! I'm really impressed! That is BEYOND cloning.
And at least i now have another common term I won't have to worry about translating next time I'm down that way. I've made some linguistic gaffes there and in your "colony" to the east. (Or the natives have made some, depending on your point of view...) Mostly too funny to relate in polite company.
I never would have guessed you cloned out anything but one branch! I think you did an excellent job! My only thought is I'd remove some of the empty space on the left, unless you need a particular aspect ratio.
Don't have plans to head that way, but then I don't plan very far ahead. Where are you? Last time I was there it was under somewhat unusual circumstances -- an around-the-world flight in a single engine plane on our honeymoon in 1971. We were the first people to make an ATW flight without trying to set some kind of record -- thereby, I suppose, setting some kind of record....
Need to come back, though -- I'm dying to shoot the Milky Way from the southern hemisphere -- you have a front row seat of the galactic center, which is the most interesting part. It's lower on the horizon from up here.
Wow! Around the world in a single engine plane. That's an incredible and impressive feat...especially for those days.
We're on the east coast just west of Brisbane. 30 years ago we had a good view of the stars, but like everywhere, suburbia has caught up with us. You don't need to travel too far out of Brisbane though. You can't beat the star-scapes of the deserts. No hills, mountains, trees. The outback is just like being on a different planet. I just love it.
We came in at Darwin (from Bali) went down to Alice Springs/Ayres Rock, and departed from Brisbane for New Zealand. We visited some very interesting settlements and outback stations in between. It definitely wasn't a luxury trip. The back seat was removed and replaced by a very large fuel tank, which put us 30% over gross weight and moved the center of gravity several inches aft of the aft limit (with a special waiver). That made a heavy takeoff for a long flight a very delicate operation as you had no feel for the fore-aft pressure on the control wheel, which controls your climb rate. (The longest was 17 hours, Tarawa to Honolulu.) We had weight allowance for approximately a change of clothes and a toothbrush each -- and very utilitarian clothes at that. Overwater navigation was by sextant and radio communication by HF radio with a long trailing wire antenna. It would be a little easier today.
Diane, this adventure sounds like something you should write a book about. With photographs and wonderful ability to tell a story, it would be something like "Tracks" or "Wild"? Maybe a movie would be better. I wonder who would play your role?
Do you know the work of Richard Green? www.richardgreen.net.au He, and his wife, traveled around Australia in a helicopter. In much more comfort than you did. He, and his wife and another photographer/enviromentalist died recently in a copter crash.
Wish I had had the digital technology we do today for photographs. We only had weight allowance for a modest camera and film allowance, and the slide scans (not to mention the lens) are so awful by today's standards. But I was gratified to hear that Art Wolf's new "best of" book ("Earth is My Witness") featured new re-shoots of some of his most successful old work.
We thought about some writing but never got very far with it. Too many other things to do. I don't know of Richard Green -- will check it out. I'm sorry to hear about the crash -- too painful a memory of Galen and Barbara Rowell. (And if anyone hasn't heard, no -- she was not flying. They had the misfortune to hire an illegal charter operator. He was apparently illegal for a reason...)
Channel-billed Cuckoo
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