Really sweet looking bird, and the DOF is very effective at drawing your eye to the bird. I wish the post at the front wasn't cutting the tail in half, and there seems to be a bit of noise in the background (which is easily dealt with). Background looks a bit funky in spots too...did you do some cloning? Agree it looks slightly oversaturated too.
Personally I would prefer a little bit less saturation. It would have been nice if you could have moved a bit to your right, so that the tail would have been completely visible. Having said that, at times it is difficult to move, especially when it is a rare bird.
Yes I did do a littlr cloning. There was a white area between the birds belly and the fence that I cloned to the bg color. I'm still new to post photo processing. What would be the best way to deal with the bg noise?How can smooth it out without affecting the sharpness of the bird?I feel teh same way about the fence and the tail as well. Thanks for your reply.
With a background like that you could probably get away with using the Magic Wand tool to select just the background, then invert the selection (so only the bird and fence are selected) and then apply sharpening just on that...leaving the BG untouched. Alternatively, you can buy noise reduction software plug-ins for Photoshop (such as Noise Ninja) which allow you to run noise reduction just on areas you select.
Quick Masking would be an option to consider instead of cloning too...APTATS, sold by Birds As Art, gives a great account of how to do all that stuff.
Noise ninja is a good option for noise inherent in the image - if the noise is being accentuated by sharpening I would sharpen on a new layer and use a layer mask to restrict it to the subject. I find Photokit Sharpener very useful - there are some smoothing brushes in it can can smooth noise too.
All the comments above are giving you great advice. If you are new to post processing, you should definitely get "Digital Basics" and APTATS from Birds As Art.com. They will get you on track in a hurry, and will shorten the learning curve by miles!
Dave
There's been a lot of good advice given, especially on sharpening. I like the curve of the fence and the nice detail in the dove. I wish for a complete tail and/or more DOF for some of the front fence.
Mourning Dove
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