Wakodahatchee Wetlands
Nikon D300
Nikon 300/2.8
ISO 400
F/4 at 1/2000
Manual
Hand Held
Great Blue Heron
Wakodahatchee Wetlands
Nikon D300
Nikon 300/2.8
ISO 400
F/4 at 1/2000
Manual
Hand Held
This one is fairly easy - Someone jump in with ...
How to improve this one!!!! - Would be good if one of our newer BPN members has a shot at it - best way to learn on someone else's image (No Emotional attachment)
Looking forward to seeing the responses :)
Sure, I'll bite.
First though, your image size at 800px is fine but image bytes at 56KB is rather small and will impact details. Save/post your image between 100-200KB, right Lance?
I did quick simple work in PS on nothing but light using curves. On total image then went back to sky to darken back down and blue some. The sky really jpg blocked up and I'm not sure whether primarily due to your small KB size or probably the PS technique I used. But here it is -
.
And I'm sure still more "learning opportunity" remaining!!
Tom
Correct Tom - I use a save for Web action in Photoshop - happy to provide if of any help.Originally Posted by Tom Graham
Heading in the right direction.
Why did you make these changes??
Not much time to spend on this, but thought it was a potentially nice image that wouldn't take too much to get to the next level -
- I thought the branches contributed to the story, but since they were very straggly, decided to quickly clone them out
- Did a quick levels adjustment which brightened the image up and brought more colour into play
- Did a little curves adjustment to try and open up the underside of the left/foreground wing - not really satisfied with this, and would hope to do better with a RAW file - started to get noise and then cut back
- Curves left the right/background wing looking a bit bleached out so I did a copy layer, multiplied, masked the wing and took it back to 30% - maybe I should have added some selective black in there to give more contrast
- Brightened to taste with a screen layer at 20%
- Saved to web.
Thanks, Ken for letting us play!
Gerald
Thanks guys...will I ever learn this processing stuff ? :confused: I have a great idea.... confident I can get the flight shots... and then send my cards to you guys to process. :D
Why did I do what I did to repost? Because BIF was much to dark.
Why did I NOT clone out the branches? Because it explains why the BIF legs are down, and head back, not in flight position. With no branches it looks to me like a BIF just stuck in the air, made hovering. :)
FWIW, you don't need PS to do what I did, a simple program like Irfanview will do that and more and is free!!! Here is original put through Ifranview for 10 secs, biggest change was to up gamma but also added a bit of contrast, brightness and saturation. (And left in branches :)) Actually came out better than my repost using PS!!!
Tom
Two versions. The first sets white and black points, and also brightens the bird (curves and S/H) restricted by a mask on the bird.
For the second, I wondered how it would look to colorize the background, and I sorta like it. :cool:
1. Curves - adjusts white point (adds contrast brightens in general), lifts darks for some detail.
2. Modified color (in wide gamut CMYK, uh, special mode) with curves to reduce cyan in sky, tap up magenta in places.
3. Modified color of back wing (regular RGB mode again) blue channel curves.
4. One last tonal curve to balance light in sky.
5. One dust bunny (I think) removed top left in clouds.
6. Saved with sRGB color profile attached ;) .
This is a beautiful shot... great color. A little underexposed under wing. Very dramatic. A pleasure to work on.
Cheers,
-Michael-
Hi - IMHO Davids repost is on the money - Simple and address's the issues - Black and White points are always my first step.
Very easy to over process - when you have a good base image - its just tweaks.
Ken - dont hesitate to put what you have learnt here into practise on other peoples images.
:)
Great thread, I like seeing and reading the different ways this image was processed.
A nice capture, Ken. Hang in there on learning the PP.
Peter
Hi Michael,
Just out of curiosity, why do you convert to (WG)CMYK to adjust cyan and magenta, and then convert back to RGB? Why not just remain in RGB?
David,
Greetings. I've found it useful to specifically adjust the CMYK channels, particularly for cyan adjustments. With K separated out, the color adjustments to CMY don't appear to have as much impact on luminance as RGB adjustments do and I have quick access to some direct luminance adjustments with K (though not completely the same).
I find the specific adjustment in cyan, for my taste, works great both on skies (and things lit by skies) and skin tones. An equivalent adjustment in RGB would impact at least 2 channels if not all three. Once I discovered the wide gamut versions of CMYK, I was happy that the mode conversions didn't lose information (or not enough to worry about).
The downside (for me) is you can't carry the changes along in separate layers with separate modes (AFAIK) in PS.
By the way... I'm Yamo from the Cafe (I might have guessed who you were even without the avatar ;) )...
Ken,
This has strayed off topic and the novice post-processor can ignore the above. I should say though, that time spent learning the levels adjustment is time well spent. The greater part of the processing that I did, at least, could be accomplished with a simple levels adjustment.
Cheers,
-Michael-
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