Golden Spoonbill

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Captured last light Edithvale wetlands, Melbourne with Canon 30D 300mm F4 IS + 1.4X, 1/1000 sec, F/6.3, ISO-400, Pattern Metering, Shutter Priority.

http://birdphotographers.net/forums/...1&d=1202879202

[Fabs Forns]

Great action captures. The whites look hot on his back probably from post-processing and it needs to be sharper. I had never seen this bird, thanks for sharing!

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

The whites look hot on his back probably from post-processing and it needs to be sharper

Thanks Fabs, yes I tried to cool down the back but the bird was the last thing the setting sun hit and it was way too bright, best I could do at the time, any advice greatly appreciated.:)

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Fabs I worked on the back with curves and the clone tool and used smart sharpen, any improvement? or am I shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted?:)

[Grady Weed]

Second post is much better.

[Fabs Forns]

Chistopher, much better and the way it looked to me was overuse of the curves tool. The sun would not put that pink halo around the hot spot, curves will.

Glad you were able to fix it!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The repost is much better. I would try to remove the remaining hot spot and maybe selectively sharpen the head as the eye still looks a bit soft.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

How is this Axel?

[Axel Hildebrandt]

That is probably as much as you can get out of the bird. The BG looks a bit noisy, maybe from repeated adjustments. There is still a hot spot. It might be a good idea to start from scratch and apply all the different changes in the TIFF file at once and don't sharpen the BG. :)

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Axel, good idea, I don't have a TIFF but I have kept the original RAW files so I will start there.:)

Thanks mate, as Benny Hill used to say "learning all the time":)

[hal bruce]

Number 3 is excellent, Chris. We only have the Royal Spoonbill around here, which is rather different. (Wgong area, NSW)
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