Cooper's Hawk
This immature Cooper's Hawk came to our (mismatched) bird bath a while ago. This was a horizontal image, but I cropped it to a vertical for better impact. I'm wondering if there is anything I can do to improve the noisy background. I've tried to lasso the bird and bird bath and blur the background, but it created a halo around the bird. Any ideas?
Camera: Canon EOS 10D
Lens: 400mm f/5.6
1/160s, f5.6 ISO 200, no flash, handheld against wall
www.dorisdumrauf.com
Last edited by Doris Dumrauf; 02-23-2008 at 02:30 PM.
Welcome, Doris. Nice find and details. You could use the reduce noise tool instead. I applied some NR on the background but you need to start from scratch to avoid the halo. It also looks as if you sharpened the BG since it is quite noisy for ISO 200.
The BG is quite distracting. It might look much better if the leaves were not sunlit. Keep them coming!
I think you could darken it in Photoshop then use the history brush tool to paint the dark BG on to the original file you opened. Takes a bit of getting used to the technique but it sometimes works pretty well.
A pretty bird probably looking for more than a drink of water eh? Nice image Doris!!!
Welcome to BPN!!!
HI Doris Big Welcome !!!!!!
I like your bird Got a nice pose Fairly good placement in the frame MIght have brought up a bit The biggest suggestion I can give you is to look at the bg while making the image This will give you lots of work post processing Also is a difficult situation exposure wise Fill flash would have helped Composition wise moving a step of two to the right would have eliminated the merging green
Processing wise the easiest way to select the bird is with the magic wand and make add to selection There are many different ways just suggested this one since it suited the bg and is easy Played with the bg and lighten the bird some btw for the selection to avoid halo remember to contract r selection In this case the bg was selected so I inverted the selection then inverse it next contract 2 pixels Halo was present when I was working so not much to to there Also understand we are doing this fairly quick as illustrations
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