Red and Blue

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image of a Northern Cardinal at Circle B Bar Reserve in Polk County, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED image captured at 400mm
1/2500 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV -1/3 ISO 180 Auto 1 WB, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom Classic CC, Photoshop CC 2018 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Arthur Morris]

Too many branches and the REDs are too dense for me ...

with love, artie

[Joseph Przybyla]

Too many branches and the REDs are too dense for me ...

with love, artie

Hi Artie, thank you for the critique. I reworked the image... hoping this is better especially the reds. With my new computer display I am finding that posting in BPN the colors become more saturated than the original. Not sure why but there has been mention of it in the past.

[Arthur Morris]

Better but the REDs are still problematic ... Too enamel in spots.

with love, artie

[Joseph Przybyla]

Better but the REDs are still problematic ... Too enamel in spots.

with love, artie

Hi Artie, maybe three's a charm. I went back to the original and tried a different approach. Please, let me know what you think. I thought blacks were hard, red is more difficult. Thanks for you comment.

[Arthur Morris]

Sorry, worse :)

Send me the RAW file please to the samandmayas address.

with love, artie

[John Mack]

Red and blue does go nice together. I like it.

[Arthur Morris]

Joe sent me the NEF file along with these comments:

The image is underexposed because the red channel kept clipping. Any help or suggestions for exposing and post processing red birds would be appreciated.

When you are in the field, I cautioned him that there were lots of times when you need to clip the RED s a bit to avoid viciously underexposing the rest of the image and turning the colors to mud. While working on the image I realized that the cameras are overly sensitive to the RED channel. Why do I say that? Joe said that he underexposed the image to save the RED channel but when I opened it the whole thing was two stops underexposed ... Problems with the RED channel often arise with colorful sunrises and sunsets but red birds in sweet light can be a problem too. All are advised to take a look at the When to Burn the RED Channel and What to Do About It ... blog post here.

For the RAW conversion in ACR I first increased the exposure by two full stops and then played with the Luminosity and the Saturation sliders for the REDs and the ORANGEs (along with my standard workflow adjustments). Once the image was brought into Photoshop it was again business as usual. The only thing out of the ordinary that I did was to select the brightest REDs using Select > Color Range, put the selection on a layer, changed the Blending Mode to Linear Burn and then reduced the Opacity to 15%.

with love, artie

ps: to learn more of the above and tons more check out my Current Workflow e-Guide (aka Digital Basics II) here.

with love, artie