Well Al, I played this by the seat of my pants . . . Using CS4 . .
First I took it into Curves, Defaults my Shadow RGB is 7,7,7, Highlight 245,245,245, Midtones 133,133,133,
I used Shadow eye dropper for black, Highlight for whites, Midtones neutral gray. Then I deselected "Show Channel Overlays. Clicked middle on diagonal line, then 1/2 way to top, and half way to bottom from center, selected top point, pressed up key about 10x, then selected bottom point and pressed down key 10x, looking at preview results I tapped both top and bottom points a tap or two until I thought it suited me. Then I gave it USM 30/1/0 . . . . To my eye looked pretty good.
Cropped it, and then using method I described in Artistic License, I covered it in a white layer, Clicked layer mask and painted out white later with black tool brusk so I had a fade around wing. Looked OK
Hi Uncle Gus,
I like the second colored repost...I would even consider cropping even tighter,to where the white feather of the wing section ends, about 1/4 more from the bottom...:cool:
Just cropped and rotated.
Although it is a substantial crop, there's enough detail in the feathers, and with the camera's quality, I believe you could interpolate to get a decent enlargement out of it.
I was thinking of doing something abstract, especially with the pattern in the feathers, but nothing really panned out. I decided not to crop also. I adjusted most of my lights and darks by masking in PS. That goes with the selective sharpening as well. I cloned out a few distracting things, mostly on the back and far left wing. That left the back pretty well black and non-detailed, but less distracting to me as well.
Image to work on !!!!
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