Tricolor Heron Flight Capture

[WIlliam Maroldo]

SonyA700~Sony70-400G@400mm~ISO500~F7.1~1/1250 sec~manual exposure~hand held~Houston, Texas~8-13-09
CS4/Topaz Adjust3(small detail)/Topaz Clean2
juvenile
comments and critique welcomed.
regards~Bill

[denise ippolito]

Bill, It looks a bit more outlined than usual-but I love it!! Very nice wing detail and pose!! HK BG w/ slight border looks good. A bit tight for me. Great work!!!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Bill, I echo Denise's comments. Would suggest adding some room on the left...

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Thanks Denise! As usual, you have been very helpful. There is a good reason why it looks a bit more outlined than usual, and now that you mention it, I don't like it. My usual practice, with High-Key, is to shoot that way;low contrast conditions (meaning overcast), overexpose the subject, blow out the background, etc. ) However, this time I took a standard image, selected the subject, copied to a new layer, filled the bottom layer with white, then the filters. In other words manufactured HK. I see now there are serious problems with this approach, that there is a discernible difference, and I'm going to stick with the shooting HK method. Thanks. regards~Bill

[denise ippolito]

Bill, I think there are good and bad points to be made w/ the outline. I think it makes it look more like a piece of art-which I like also. But if you are going for a more realistic look than I agree about the outline.
I love the high -key look and sometimes I do it PP also. Do you contract your selection by 1 pixel? I ask because I'm always looking to fine tune my selected images.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Denise: yes, I do contract the selection, sometimes by more than one pixel(using the refine edges dialog box). Normally, I also usually use feathering, a few pixels at least. However, Clean2 has problems with soft edges (halos and stuff), and to avoid these, pretty good edge sharpness in the original image helps. You may have noticed this when trying the filter. In this case, selection feathering didn't seem to be such a good idea since it softens the edges. Without feathering, the resulting edge doesn't look too realistic, but as you pointed out, that may not be all bad. Thanks again!~Bill

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

It is a little tight for me too, but I do like it and it's fantastic that you shared your workflow. Thanks Bill. :) I cannot comment on the PP things a lot. :( I do like the end product. though

[denise ippolito]

Denise: yes, I do contract the selection, sometimes by more than one pixel(using the refine edges dialog box). Normally, I also usually use feathering, a few pixels at least. However, Clean2 has problems with soft edges (halos and stuff), and to avoid these, pretty good edge sharpness in the original image helps. You may have noticed this when trying the filter. In this case, selection feathering didn't seem to be such a good idea since it softens the edges. Without feathering, the resulting edge doesn't look too realistic, but as you pointed out, that may not be all bad. Thanks again!~Bill

Thanks Bill. Have you tried the new Topaz Detail ?

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Denise: yes I have tried Topaz detail, and I wasn't overly impressed (which is a first for a Topaz product). It could be that I usually use high-pass sharpening, and sometimes smart sharpen, and I can't see much advantage in Topaz Detail. As a matter of fact, although it does seem to take care of the halos (which incidentally was a bigger problem when I used unsharp mask, ), the real problem with any sharpening is the creation of noise and not halos IMHO. I routinely use a small history brush to remove sharpening halos if they show up. Noise, on the other hand, is a much more serious problem. Detail still creates noise with sharpening. Anyway, I am still evaluating it, and maybe my first impressions may be incorrect(I hope). regards~Bill

[denise ippolito]

Bill, Thanks! I think I'm going to try the free download and see if I can see a difference.