Laughing Kookaburra

[Colin Driscoll]

A bird from my yard today.



50D | 100-400 @ 340 | 1/500 f7.1| -.33 iso auto @ 400 | HH

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice looking bird, and I like its' pose. I also like the OOF vegetation. The noise in the darks, and especially on the eye is quite noticeable. Was the image originally underexposed with levels brought back up? I also detect a clone mark underneath the branch directly below the bill tip.

[Randy Stout]

Colin:

Very nice pose, HA, sharpness.

Agree with Daniel re: noise, and cloning marks, it also looks to me that there was some cloning just above the branch in the same area.

Hope to see more, an attractive bird.

Randy

[Colin Driscoll]

Thx - yes it I underexposed a bit to try and not lose the detail in the breast and it was a bit of a dull day. You got me on that clone mark :o, should've been more careful, there was a long small branch from there to the RH edge of the pic. Didn't clone anything above that area though.

[Stu Bowie]

Lovely looking species, and I like the pose. The noise is visible to me too Colin.

[Tony Whitehead]

Nice pose and sharpness, Colin. The OOF foliage makes avery nice BG. Noise and cloning already covered.

[Joe Senzatimore]

Nice yard you have!!!!! Seems a bit flat probably due to the light you had or didn't have.

[Simon Bennett]

I like the typical pose and crips presentation. The eye seems to have some noise showing?

[Colin Driscoll]

I'm afraid I did this bird an injustice with my OP so here is what I hope is an improved image. This was the shot before the one I first posted and had some flash at -1.33.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Hi Colin

Neat image from your yard. to me it looks a little flat, without contrast. I made a few tweaks. Hope you like. :)

Adjusted levels slider and also pulled out mid tones a little.
Lightened the eye a little with the Dodge Tool
Darkened the pupil a little with the Burn Tool

Then

Used a selective color adjustment as below
Black channel - +2 points with Black Slider
Neutral channel - +2 points with Black Slider
White channel - -9 points with Black Slider.

How do you like this presented as is now?
Needless to say, all the above adjustments should be done on separate layers for ease of working and efficiency.

[Colin Driscoll]

Thanks Akos, great result :) The selective colour adjustment is way ahead of my level of experience with CS3 so the process detail is most appreciated. I had felt it was a little flat but wasn't sure how to fix it.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Thanks Akos, great result :) The selective colour adjustment is way ahead of my level of experience with CS3 so the process detail is most appreciated. I had felt it was a little flat but wasn't sure how to fix it.

You are welcome Colin. Always happy to help another keen Aussie. :)

Now, the selective color adjustment is no longer beyond you mate. Just experiment on an adjustment layer. Say you opened your image into Photoshop, then go to:

Layer > New adjustment layer and then select which you want, I usually use levels, curves and selective color, now that I do saturations in ACR. If you cannot see layers on the right side of the CS3 window, press F7 to show them or go to Window > Layers (then if ticked, the layers will show and you just go ahead and learn them) Any questions, just send me a note.