Sylvester (C)

[Glenn Pure]

Not sure if I'm too late for the theme. If so, please ignore. This is Sylvester, an orphaned cheetah who was found at about 3 days old with his fellow cubs dead and mother killed (by a lion if memory serves). Luckily the mother and cubs were being observed by a ranger when this happened and Sylvester was rescued and hand-raised. He is now an ambassador for cheetahs in the local communities around Victoria Falls. We went for an early morning walk with him while staying at a wonderful lodge (Elephant Camp) inside Victoria Falls National Park. He is normally kept on a leash but is let off for these walks and roams freely and interacts with people quite well. This shot was taken while he was roaming free on the morning walk. Crop is about half the frame area and is fairly tight so his collar isn't visible.Thanks for taking the time to look...

Technical: Canon 80D with Lens EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/500, f7.1, ISO 800. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, Sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin where modest NR applied to main subject and stronger NR to background. Sharpened (sharpness function: remove Gaussian blur, radius = 0.4 pixels, 50%) after final size reduction.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Glenn, if this is 'Captive' then you need to add (C) within the title .

I like the side profile and the mottle backdrop, including the more brighter areas. Techs look OK, but as I've mentioned before, hefty cropping will kill the IQ, however I understand the reasons why on this occasion. I would look to reducing the Orange as it's appearing a tad dominant IMHO. Having the sun behind you rather than to the right would have been better.

Neat Image NR plugin where modest NR applied to main subject

Why, at ISO800 you will have minimal noise if any, Glenn in the next postings don't apply it, lets see.

TFS
Steve

[Steve Kaluski]

He is normally kept on a leash but is let off for these walks and roams freely and interacts with people quite well.

Hi Glenn, after re re reading your intro I think it does fall into the category of Captive and therefore I have added a (C) in the header.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Glenn- I agree with Steve that Sylvester definitely falls into the captive category. A nice profile with good sharpness. The comp works well. The image looks very warm despite the head being in shadow, what time of day was it taken? If it were mine I would pull back on the reds and yellows in the whites, particularly in the under chin and neck areas. I too would like to see it without any NR.

TFS,
Rachel

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

A nice shot of the captive cheetah with good look at the coat & eye. Agree with the colours, a minor adjustment should do. TFS.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you Steve, Rachel and Sanjeev. I have toned down the red and yellow in the highlight areas of the cheetah and not applied NR to the cat, as requested. I think the colour is a definite improvement but I can't really see much difference from the non-application of NR (still applied to the bgnd though). Note that my lighting adjustments on the repost are slightly different to the OP as I didn't record exactly what I did but the RP is fairly close.

I'd appreciate hearing back if you can see any change on the detail front. You may or may not recall that I have been queried on my use of NR in the past and made a post to the Digital Photography Workflow forum (most recent post there). I'm using Neat Image and I'm not sure how familiar you are with this product but it is capable of effective NR with almost imperceptible impact on detail when used correctly. 'Correct use' means either auto-profiling the noise in the particular image being processed or creating noise profiles for my camera/ISO/exposure settings and selecting the appropriate profile for the image in question. I have done the latter but sometimes auto-profile if the image has suitable areas to profile. Either way, the noise parameters are recorded and the smarts in this software work on those while preserving the detail. I sometimes turn on a little USM in Neat Image too which will can actually enhance the sharpness while still effectively controlling noise. I think you would be hard-pressed to see much impact from my NR workflow even on unscaled images but please take a look at the workflow post I made for more detail and let me know what differences you may see in the two images. I suspect small changes to my output sharpening will have a much bigger impact than any tweaking of NR on the detail areas in the master image. Perhaps the comments I've had about IQ in the past (where I thought the starting image was quite good) are related to inappropriate output sharpening?

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Glen a very nice close up of the Cheetah ....i really like the crop and the gaze of the subject ...into the future ?

From the tonal and color POV , i am not too fuzzed about the image as presented . It has a HDR feeling with compressed HL and shadows IMHO . The image shows the typical Canon orange when processed with DPP 4 ....well from my view .
Looking at the somewhat harsh lighting i would expect deeper shadows and 3/4 tones .

TFS Andreas

[Glenn Pure]

From the tonal and color POV , i am not too fuzzed about the image as presented . It has a HDR feeling with compressed HL and shadows IMHO . The image shows the typical Canon orange when processed with DPP 4 ....well from my view .
Looking at the somewhat harsh lighting i would expect deeper shadows and 3/4 tones .
TFS Andreas

Thanks Andreas. Your commment on HDR look was interesting as I didn't do any selective tonal adjustments on parts of the cheetah. I did raise shadows and lower highlights on the cheetah (and I think added some midtone contrast to try to recover some of the flattening that occurred as a result). Also reduced highlights in the background. Maybe that's why it looks a bit HDR? Overall, I was fairly happy with the tones in this one but it's always hard to judge critically after staring at an image and playing with it for a while.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Glenn ...to explain further my thinking of this frame looking "HDR" .
What you did is basically "HDR" treatment , dropping HL and lifting shadow , followed by mid tone adjustment to overcome the flattening in the tones. Because under the given circumstances the camera cannot get it all in the tonal range .
And you did for sure localized adjustments just by lifting shadows and dropping HL ...

I think people call it "Faux HDR " when you work with one image or two that you blend together.
I think normal HDR contains more images to be blended together .
Now it is very techie ...

Hope this helps , Andreas

[Andreas Liedmann]

Glenn ...having thought about this meanwhile , i forgot to ask where you lifted shadows and dropped HL ?
I bet in DPP , but i might be wrong.
The image does look like it that way .
If you used DPP , i would never exceed +1.5 for shadow and -1.5 for HL recovery . for a simple reason , as shadow recovery is bleeding into the mid tone range .The HL recovery is adding some weird fringing on contrast edges , plus colors will look freaky in parts.
DPP is a great piece of software, i use it only for my files.
But some functions are really crap.
Better and a more elegant way is to create two files and blend them together in PS , even Elements can do this.
Full control what will be lifted and what will be dropped ....
Well this is just my solution ....

Cheers Andreas

[Glenn Pure]

Glenn ...having thought about this meanwhile , i forgot to ask where you lifted shadows and dropped HL ?
I bet in DPP , but i might be wrong.
The image does look like it that way .
If you used DPP , i would never exceed +1.5 for shadow and -1.5 for HL recovery . for a simple reason , as shadow recovery is bleeding into the mid tone range .The HL recovery is adding some weird fringing on contrast edges , plus colors will look freaky in parts.

Thanks Andreas. As mentioned a few posts down, I did raise shadows and drop highlights. But I'm curious why you would say that shadow and highlight recovery will do the things you say? I guess based on experience of the look of applying these? I've not seen these effects but I don't have your skilled 'eye'. Also odd because HL and Shadow recovery are supposedly just shifting the tone curve (you can see this visually in DPP when using it): so these effects seem implausible and surely no different to doing the same in Photoshop?

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Glenn ....i say these things because of my experience with DPP for over many years now .It is for sure my own view ....others might see it differently .

I do not know the algorithm behind the HL and shadow recovery , there are sophisticated ways and less sophisticated ways to get these effects . And i think Canon should make it work better ......
I do not know if it is that simple just tweaking the tone curve ....in that algorithm ? Maybe you know .

I even do not know what Canon calls " shadow " or " highlight " , and i personally like to target what will be lifted / dropped and not let the dumb piece of software do that job. That is the big difference between i.e. DPP and PS , i can exactly decide which areas will be dropped/ lifted . I have 100 % control ...! And therefore it is very different
My reason to work that way .

Cheers Andreas

[Glenn Pure]

Hi Glenn ....i say these things because of my experience with DPP for over many years now .It is for sure my own view ....others might see it differently .

Thanks again for your observations here, Andreas. I'll be sure to watch for any issues with DPP although as mentioned, I hadn't noticed anything significant in my several years using it. Your assistance with this is helpful and much appreciated. The visual feedback that DPP gives in actually shifting the tone curve when the HL and shadow reduction is performed indicated to me that this was simply a controlled tone curve adjustment... but who knows for sure.

I wonder what Arash and Artie's experiences are here with DPP as they seem to be strong advocates for it and have produced some fine results - but not sure they are looking at this particular forum.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Well all will have different opinions about the same subject .... i know by own experience that some people are constantly changing their minds about what is good or bad ......when it comes to using software .
As one of them was constantly jumping between different raw converters ......

To sum and finish this up ....from my side, as it is going very off topic now . I like to give you an advice , do not follow blindly what others suggest . Just be open to other thoughts and let them settle ...implement them in your WF and see if that works for you .Does not matter where they come from ...wether from my side or others , as we all see the things differently .
Hope this discussion helped ....i take every time something out of this kinda threads

Cheers Andreas