Well, I'm back with another pic where I have some materials that go through the main subject, only this time it's not in the foreground so much like it was in my Anhinga post a while ago. Let me throw up the pic for C&C.
Sony A77, 300mm, f5.6, 1/1250, iso 320
Cropped medium-levels (I need to do like Glennie and post the original with the crop pic -- how do you do that Glennie??)
Some LR adjustments to Exposure, Contrast, Highlights and Shadows -- more light to back side of bird, show details better, but not blow out the exposed white breast areas. Hope I'm getting better with the LR tools.
I also just purchased the Adobe CC package so now I will have Photoshop and its tools available to me. I'm hoping that whatever C&C you have, I can go back in and try them out for the first time on this pic ...
As for my own C&C .... I could not get any further to the left to be 100% certain all wispy vegetation was out of the way, know that would have been better, but it also would have taken me at a stronger angle away from sun. As the winds were blowing slightly, I was trying to catch a pic where most of it was out of the way -- have several that are worse than this one with the palm-frond wisps going through the body of the bird, etc. This one there seems to only be one going through the tail. Candidate for Healing Brush?
A very nice catch! The tonalities look good, and good focus. I don't mind the wispy fronds, as they give a sense of place, but the one cutting the UL corner is distracting. You could crop from the left just enough to remove it but that takes away some hint of where the wisps are coming from. A good solution might be to crop less, allowing more canvas on the right. If you don't have it in the original, I have a tutorial on adding canvas -- it's easy and a good exercise for using PS.
You would have gotten a more ideal light angle if you had moved to the right, and a better pose if you had gotten the bird to turn a little more toward you, but that's not always possible.
The contrast seems a little soft -- you might try a very slight amount of Clarity, which is midtone contrast.
Look forward to seeing more, and watching your journey with PS!
Hi Andrew! Congrats on the CC package. You will have a good time :)
As with the picture itself, I think the chromatic aberrations is out of control here. But it's not supposed to be too hard to fix even on Lightroom. The vantage point here resulted in a less than ideal head/body angle. But I think you have the whites controlled. I would punch in a little bit more saturation as I feel the sky is too grey-ish right now. Maybe, just maybe, add canvas to the right with blue sky. This image begs for more negative space to the right.
Adhika is right about the purple fringing -- I didn't mention it as I thought it might be more an issue with your lens and/or sensor, rather than CA. Try the CA correction and then the fringing slider in LR (under the Lens Corrections / Color tab). It may help quite a bit.
Thanks everyone. I will work on a re-do based off your suggestions. As I mentioned this will be my first time to use PS, so it might take me a little time to get my re-do back up for you to look at, ok? :)
Andrew, congratulations on PS. There is so much to learn, and I know I have only just scratched the surface. I love to play and don't mind making mistakes. Like everything, the more you use it, the better you will get.
The crop is a reduced view (to 6.3%) of the ACR image. My crop is always done in PS, but add it to the ACR to post.
Diane and Adhika have summed up my thoughts. There are some good details in the whites. I have taken the liberty of having a play. I have cropped off LHS and added canvas top and RHS. I added texture, which probably isn't necessary. Cloned out a few fronds. A curves layer on the black eye stripe to show a bit more detail and cloned out extra catch light. I've dodged and burned also.
Looking forward to seeing more!
Last edited by Glennie Passier; 03-24-2016 at 01:32 AM.
Congrats on PS Andrew, you will learn to love it! I caught one down in North Fort Myers, Florida but it was much more hidden than your specimen. Nice details on the bird, enough comments made on changes, but I like the setting!
Glennie, I like your composition, but it has gone a bit dark and the contrast has gone high, although the original might have used a squeak.
Your black swan in the previous post was also on the dark and contrasty side -- have you calibrated your monitor lately, or changed the room lighting? Is it one where the tilt angle changes the brightness of the image?
Last edited by Diane Miller; 03-24-2016 at 05:41 PM.
Diane, No. I haven't calibrated lately. How often should this happen? I look at a "greyscale test card" quite often and all appears OK there. My monitor is a tilty one, but try not to move it. Although my very small, PA has been adjusting a lot of things in my office lately.
Many monitors tilt, but are you saying that the screen goes lighter and darker if you tilt it? If so, you just told me your calibration is off!! Redo it, and keep your line of sight at 90 deg to the monitor, vertically. Not easy, but your only option.
How often is hard to say. Many of the calibration packages recommend once a month, but it anything changes it should be redone. Never touch screen controls such as brightness or contrast, and keep room light as constant as possible.
You can't tell by just looking if it has gone off, and often you won't see a noticeable difference after it's done.
And a new monitor usually needs a new calibration package -- an old one may seem to work but isn't really doing anything. Supported monitors are listed on the package web site.
And you need a hardware calibration system with a colorimeter and matching software, not one that involves looking at some sort of pattern on the monitor and tweaking monitor controls.
Hi everyone: Sorry it's been a while, but life gets in the way sometimes .... good news is I should be able to spend a little more time working on my photos.
And so, back to this photo. I've applied the suggestions as best I could within Lightroom and then exporting to Photoshop (boy do I have a lot to learn there!) and then back to Lightroom for final crop and export. I applied: CA adjustments with Fringing slider, mid-tone corrections with Clarity slider, and Saturation with blue tones to get a blue-er background instead of the grey. I added some canvas to the right, re-cropped, and this is what I have now ....
Hoping people find this better than my original, but as always open to additional C&C.
Looks like Fringing did a lot of good. The crop here is the only thing I'd comment on at this stage -- it is too tight (bird too large in the frame). I would leave the top and bottom as you had it in the original, and not add so much on the right -- nothing is happening over there to justify so much empty space. And I wouldn't crop so tightly on the left. Here's my suggestion from your original. Cropped a little on the L and some added on the R.
It puts the bird in the center but that's what fits in this case. You might go with a little more off the left...
And it ignores any standard crop ratios -- if you want to use one, just play with it with regard to the idea of balancing things.
Ahhh. I noticed that when I was working in PS the pic was a little bigger ...or maybe when I brought it back into LR and re-cropped, I somehow made the bird bigger. Not happy withe LR crop feature as it seems to be working both horizontally and vertically when sometimes all I want to do is crop just horizontal, or just vertical. Yes, I'm pulling on the side and not the corner. Need to figure that one out .....
In the upper right of the crop window there is a lock that limits you to the original aspect ratio. Click it to un-constrain the proportions. There is also a dropdown of some standard ratios and you can create custom ones.
Loggerhead shrike
