White-faced Heron

[Anthony Thompson]

My first post (excluding the introduction) but please don't hold back on any advise or criticism.

Aim of the image was to get a portrait of the heron with some gesture or action (e.g. feeding).. Unfortunately it wasn't in the mood for feeding. I took several images and finally got one with its head tilted towards me.. The others it head was parallel to the camera. I noticed the spider web off to the side when I looking at it on the screen and decided to leave it in the crop.

Equipment/Settings:
Fuji XT1
Fuji 50-140mm f2.8 - image at 140mm @f.5.6
ISO 400
S/S 1/100.
Hand held - OIS.
Manual focus - Focus peaking (EVF)
RAW (always)

Image is cropped from the 16mp down to 1200x800 .
PP in PS. Cropped, contrast added, tweaked colour balance.
Removed a branch from the lower very bottom corner as it was a distraction (spot healing brush)
Topaz NR and Topaz detail (sharpen),
dodge and burn the background.

How could I improve ? Does the spider web add or subtract from the image?

[Glennie Passier]

Welcome Anthony! What a great first image. You will learn so much here. I am in the ETL for a reason, so please accept everything I say with a grain of salt.

Great idea to get "some gesture". With his head tilted toward you there is eye contact that connects you to the image. You have done a good job of pruning out the branch. The BG seems a little busy, but the bird is well separated. I am unsure if I would keep the web. There could be a bit of a magenta cast creeping in? OMG! His knees look like mine! I would be tempted to see if you could give the image a little more punch. The colours look honest, but maybe a curves layer on the bird only would strengthen the image.

Well done! I hope to see more soon.

[Anthony Thompson]

Hi Glennie. Thanks for the feedback.

I agree that the web doesn't really add anything but I still think the crop works as I tried bringing it all in and it "cramps" the bird too much... I think you were right there was a very slight magenta cast which required 3pts towards green (too my eye) to get rid of it.. yes the background is busy.. I have some other images of herons on the waters edge that are much cleaner BG's but as this image was taken a few days ago and needed processing I thought Id start with it.

I did some dodging and burning to the BG and a slight increase in vibrance to see if I could give the image some more "punch"...

Better, worse or lost cause?

[Warren Spreng]

Welcome Anthony, nice shot of a handsome bird! Exposure looks good, nice details in the feathers, I like the first version best. It looks like you are getting some artifacts in the second on some of the leaves in the background. I would try a version with the spiderweb cloned out, I didn't notice it at first and now my eye keeps drifting over to it!

[Anthony Thompson]

Hi Warren,

Yes, the more I look at the image the more I think the spider web is a distraction.. Darkening the background seems to accentuate the busy background due to the increase contrast.. I think the best outcome for this image is to leave the background as per the first image and clone out the spider web. When I have a few moments Ill attempt to clone out the web and see how we go..

Thanks for your input...

[Adhika Lie]

Welcome, Anthony! I have never seen this species before! Maybe a species special to Australia. I like the OP better actually. Maybe just a little punch on the leg, but that's easily done in PS. The spider web doesn't bother me as much in the OP, it has become way too obvious in the second one especially with how those branches are shaped. It reinforces the spider web, I think. FWIW, I think the sharpening is a little heavy-handed. What do you think?

[Stuart Philpott]

Another warm welcome Anthony and another new to me bird. Anthony I'm very much learning not even delved into ps as of yet,so just thoughts really. I prefer your repost personally !! I think you did well to get the image of the heron looking towards you, the spider's web doesn't actually bother me. Could you have gone for a shallower DOF? It's tricky with a larger bird with a long beak and I am no expert,but one learns much here by asking such things. I also wonder if he/she is a bit big in frame I think ,I say think,I'd like a bit more width to this,but might be wrong on that I'm unsure it's the branch being so close on the right which maybe is what is driving this ponder.


Cracking first post well done!!

Take care

Stu

[Glennie Passier]

Thankyou for the repost. I too, like the OP better. For the spider web, I'd try to knock it off, just by cloning over the bits in the green tree. I feel in the repost you have darkened the FG branch too much and have choked the shadows. Adhika has mentioned the artifacts appearing now. I agree. WDYT about selecting the BG only and try a curves adjustment layer to bring down the intensity of the BG. I think the bird needs to be the star here, not the BG.

[Diane Miller]

Very nice! Impressive focus and sharpness! The repost has gone too far in contrast, though. Maybe a small amount if Vibrance (very small) would be OK, or a very slight bit of Clarity. Cloning out the spider web would be a big job, but you could remove the 4 white dots. I'm not clear on how you cropped -- if there is more canvas on the bottom and right, I'd look at restoring some of it. Sharpening may be a bit overdone, too -- sharpening is only the introduction of artifacts that make things seem sharper, but in the long run if it's overdone it can cause issues when you resize, as another round of sharpening has to happen there to compensate for resampling.

It could be interesting to select the bird and try a little blur on the BG. Field Blur can often be successful. Gaussian Blur will bleed across the selection edges.

A very nice post -- look forward to many more!

[Anthony Thompson]

Yes the image probably is over sharpen - new version is using bare min. sharpening (defaults). I also changed the crop to give the bird more room and included the branches (previous versions I had clone some them out). The saturation and brightness on the legs have been increased to give more "punch" (works well).. While I was at it I brighten up the white in the face slightly.

DOF could have been reduced as it was shot f5.6 as I was expecting the bird to fly and wanted a bit of extra DOF for BIF images.. Ive taken Diane's advice and put a field blur (i usually use gaussian) on the background (5-6px blur) just to take the edge of the background... This also help remove the spider web as I had remove the obvious strands with the healing brush..
This time I left the bird exposure alone.

I like having more room for the bird but I'm not sure the branches on the left work.. I seem to flip flop between liking them and finding them distracting..

[Diane Miller]

Nice! I see your difficulty with the branches. You did a good job cloning them in the first post and I'd do that again. It's more complicated here with more going on at the base. That can be helped with a crop from the bottom but not as much as you did before -- just enough to lose the stub of a dead branch at the vee. That leaves more room below the feet than you had before, and the slight amount more on the right is good. Then cloning in the LR corner is easy. The issue now is the branch reaching toward the left edge, which comes close enough to create tension. You did a good job before so I'd remove it, if it were me. Then you might want to crop just a little more from the left edge.

The bird doesn't jump out as much from the BG as before -- maybe you could sharpen halfway in between -- just the bird. How did you sharpen it? You only mention PS -- was the raw conversion done in ACR?

[Anthony Thompson]

The bird doesn't jump out as much from the BG as before -- maybe you could sharpen halfway in between -- just the bird. How did you sharpen it? You only mention PS -- was the raw conversion done in ACR?

The bird is a bit more subdued in the last edit - more nature feel.

In this edit I've removed the excess branches leaving the main branches holding the bird. Increased the gausian/field background blur to reduce the distractions in the background and help improve the feeling of separation between subject and BG. Also, Reduced the amount of sharpening on the bird.
As this is not an image i plan on printing I didn't bother creating masks, everything was painted in free hand. If you look closely you can probably spot some issues... For the sack of the learning exercise it does the job..

As far as sharpening goes I have several tools that I use but for these I have been using Topaz Detail. I sharpen the entire image on a layer in PS and brush in the areas I want sharpened.. Is some cases I will go as far as creating several different levels of sharpening and painting areas for each to make the sharpening more balanced..
(Note: ACR and LR are unable to interpret Fuji RAF files correctly so I initially using Iridient Developer to convert the RAF to a TIFF to extract all the details correctly. The rest of the process I use LR/PS and plugins).

Im going to call it a wrap on this image and move onto something else. Thanks everyone for your input!

[Diane Miller]

Sharpening in PS on the master file (Before resizing for output) can be a problem, because sharpening is really only the creation of edge artifacts. There will be sharpening again when you resize and you will then be sharpening the sharpening artifacts. Very basic sharpening in ACR/LR is done with a default setting that is generally not harmful, but much more, or later in PS, can be a problem. If a file isn't sharp out of the camera, you can do very little.

Here I think you're OK, though. Just a caution.

In your last post there is a halo around the bird from beak to upper back. That could be from the blur. I'm not sure what you mean by "gaussian/field blur." Gaussian Blur will slop over a selection edge, while Field Blur won't. This looks like you used Gaussian.

I would suggest this:

Select the bird with the Quick Selection tool (touch up as needed with the brush in quick mask mode), then inverse the selection and use Field Blur -- it should blur the BG without messing up the bird. Then after you make the JPEG for output, bring it back into PS and so a very slight Smart Sharpen -- very small radius of 0.1-0.2 px.

[Anthony Thompson]

I had a bit of spare time during the week and after watching a youtube video on field blur quickly discovered I was not using it correctly as you had already picked up on... Thanks for pointing that out.. Field blur looks like something ill use much more to smooth out harsh backgrounds..

Ive always done noise reduction, sharpening and export to jpg. So i will get better results if I do noise reduction, export to jpg and then sharpen?

[Diane Miller]

Yes, you don't want to do more than minimal sharpening on the master file. The default amount in LR/ACR is the general recommendation. It is done on the L channel in LAB mode (where the raw file is handled) so there are minimal artifacts, unlike in PS.

Oversharpening in LR/ACR increases grain. Try it in some other raw converters and you will get artifacts. Certainly you don't want to oversharpen, but pushing the limits shows you want you are getting behind the scenes, and even if it's not enough to be obvious, subsequent processing can bring out things you didn't see before.