Evening Grosbeak

[Paul Lagasi]

Since its so brutally cold this week, worked on a few photos from early in January..photographed this male Evening Grosbeak coming to a local feeder..this is the first time I've seen this bird in the city....lightly overcast, nice light...might be a little tight in frame? Added catchlight, thanks Fabs...thanks for looking

D300 300 2.8 2xtc iso-1000 1/250 f5.6, out car window, cropped, NR, background gussian blur 7

[Steve Canuel]

Nice looking bird. Catchlight looks natural, nice job. Bird's plumage and perch look overly smoothed, BG looks good.

[Paul Lagasi]

I am not very experienced using CS 4 NR, I may have gone a litlle overboard with NR, do you think the smooth look is caused by NR? thank you

[Mark Schmitt]

I think your self evaluation of the noise reduction is accurate, if that is what you did. It has removed most of the details from the plumage and has caused the feathers to look like "brush strokes" in a painting. I love this bird; had only one attempt at one last summer. Never saw it again. Perhaps you might try masking the bird and creating a layer and do some selective sharpening of the bird only. ;-)

[Daniel Cadieux]

Perhaps you might try masking the bird and creating a layer and do some selective sharpening of the bird only. ;-)

...and if you are going to mask the bird (and perch too), do it before running noise reduction. Reverse selection, apply NR on BG only, reverse selection again and sharpen bird - kill two birds with one stone!:)

[Steve Canuel]

I'm not familiar with CS4 either. I use DPP and PS Elements 3 (stone age tools for this forum). The smoothness does look to be the result of excessive NR but there still seems to be some detail in the bird. Both Mark and Daniel have good suggestions. Masking the bird before running NR, and then selectively sharpening only the bird should give you the results I think you're looking for.