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Thread: Rainbow Lorikeet portrait

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    Default Rainbow Lorikeet portrait

    Hello all - I'm a 'new' member: I joined ages ago but only recently revisited this site and decided to join with posting rights. So I hope I'm posting in the right place and at the right level. All comments on the image below appreciated. These birds are spectacular in colour and arguably one of our most colourful parrots. My intention was to try and show off this colour and how it is 'rendered' in the feather detail. They are commonplace, boisterous and quite aggressive to other birds. As for my own views on the shot, the background on the left is a little busy for more liking but these birds typically spend most of their day in the foliage among flowers etc so getting a clean background can be difficult. The shot is teetering on blowing the red channel. I've pulled the white point out to bring in more highlights and darkened highlights in DPP to try and control this.

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    Details as follows: Canon 80D with EF 100-400 MkII at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/640 sec, f6.3, ISO 1000. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied to bird and stronger NR to background. Shadows lightened (bird only). Small piece of leaf that was just over the top of the bird's head has been cloned out. Sharpened (Sharpness tool) after final size reduction.

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    BPN Member Tim Foltz's Avatar
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    Hi Glenn welcome to the forum, nice details and colors on this bird. As you have mentioned the busy BG couldn't be helped.
    To help with the borderline blowing of the reds go into selective color on the red channel and start adding cyan, 35% or more usually helps (A trick from Artie).
    Another thing I would suggest is blurring the BG a bit so it's not as distracting.

    Looking forward to seeing more.

    -Tim
    Last edited by Tim Foltz; 07-23-2017 at 12:35 AM.

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    Tim, thank you so much for your comments and the repost with background blurred. If possible, would you be able to provide a bit more information on how to perform the adjustments you've suggested (no urgency)?

    For your suggestion "To help with the borderline blowing of the reds go into selective color on the red channel and start adding cyan, 35% or more usually helps", I've had a look at the various options under Photoshop Elements (and DPP) and can't work out how to do this. If you are able to provide more detail, I'd be very grateful.

    Regarding blurring the background, I have done this on images before but suspect I've not got the best method - what I do is select the inverse of the subject (with no feathering) then apply a Filter in Photoshop Elements (Gaussian Blur). This is very effective and easy to adjust the amount of blur. However, I notice that this filter 'sees' the pixels along the unselected boundary and calculates the colour and luminonsity of the blur based on this along the selected edge. The result is typically a halo around the subject. Is there a better technique or way of avoiding this?

    With thanks again.
    Glenn

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    BPN Member Tim Foltz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Glenn Pure View Post
    Tim, thank you so much for your comments and the repost with background blurred. If possible, would you be able to provide a bit more information on how to perform the adjustments you've suggested (no urgency)?

    For your suggestion "To help with the borderline blowing of the reds go into selective color on the red channel and start adding cyan, 35% or more usually helps", I've had a look at the various options under Photoshop Elements (and DPP) and can't work out how to do this. If you are able to provide more detail, I'd be very grateful.


    Regarding blurring the background, I have done this on images before but suspect I've not got the best method - what I do is select the inverse of the subject (with no feathering) then apply a Filter in Photoshop Elements (Gaussian Blur). This is very effective and easy to adjust the amount of blur. However, I notice that this filter 'sees' the pixels along the unselected boundary and calculates the colour and luminonsity of the blur based on this along the selected edge. The result is typically a halo around the subject. Is there a better technique or way of avoiding this?

    With thanks again.
    Glenn

    HI Glenn, I don't know if that's available in PS Elements, I use Photoshop CS6 but it's under IMAGE • ADJUSTMENTS • SELECTIVE COLOR and as far as the blurring
    I created a duplicate layer, lens blur on the bottom layer, then added a layer mask on the top layer then using the brush tool solid black, applied the lens blur to the areas I wanted.
    I'm sure there are other ways of achieving the same results but this is a quick easy way that worked well with your image. I hope this helps.

    -Tim

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    OK, thank you again Tim. That clarifies it. I don't have the same adjustment suite available in PSE and what you have suggested doesn't appear to be possible for me for the red channel issue. For the blurring, thanks also - I knew it was possible using methods similar to yours - was really just wondering if there was a simpler way.

    Cheers
    Glenn

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