Detail & Contrast

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

You decide if this counts as filter abuse ;). I was trying to maximize detail and contrast on what I thought was a fairly detailed image of an Anna's Hummingbird at a feeder. Between 20 and 30 layers for this one. The primary effects were:

For detail: 2 rounds of Topaz Detail 2 mostly small detail, a posterize filter with maximum intensity and Posterization settings, but 0 edge thickness. crop and posterization artifact removal (little black dots everywhere).

For contrast: Lightness (luminance) and Color contrast via LAB Curves layers. Successive pushing of the spread of color/lightness in all three channels such that there are high and low extremes in each channel giving maximum color ranges from green to magenta and from yellow to blue. Several curves layers were used to avoid blowing channels and losing color contrast in the bargain.

Corrections: Pushing the color also pushed the reflection of the red feeder prominently across the hummer's breast. Used a curves layer to selectively remove the red. Blended color contrast layer above with detail layer. Multiplied in some of the green/orangish highlights, painted in the red gorget (over black).

Finally inverted the green background to violet and brought out some blue to contrast with green and orange respectively. And global and selective sharpening.

Unfortunately the detail is too much for a 200K jpeg (1000x600 image at 70% was near 500K).

Learned a lot about LAB curves on this one... a more labor intensive saturation tool, but I really like it.

Thanks for looking/commenting.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[denise ippolito]

Michael, I think this qualifies for the contest since you clearly pushed the envelope with the adjustments. I like the BG color that you ended up with. I agree w/ you regarding the detail being a bit strong for 200kb. I like the red gorget and you did a great job w/ that. Beautiful HA and clear eye. I might remove the strong outline under the breast and belly if it were mine. Nicely done:)

[Patti Edens]

Beautiful bird and PP work! Great job on getting the most out of the colors without blowing them!

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and application, Michael.

You did a good job with pushing the envelope.

[Steve Adkins]

Michael, definitely a maximum process. :) Great feather texture and "Pop". Super result!

[Indranil Sircar]

Hi Michael, I too love the final effect. I have also started using the LAB process and I am liking it. TFS for the process.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Denise,

Greetings. Agree with the darker line at breast's edge (there is some clean up I need to do there and in the bit of un-reversed bg that is still green under the tail)... Thanks for the suggestion.

Patti, Mark, Steve, Indranil,

Thanks for commenting. I though you might be interested in seeing the image at the color contrast stage. After all the detail work I made the following with LAB curves and blended in the color to the OP. Other tests seem to show that using such a color contrasted layer with overlay or some other blending modes works pretty good at a different kind of saturation adjustment. (note: the colors on the feeder are blown but not on the bird).



(Somewhat in error, I needed to use photomerge to line this up with the detail version that I worked on in the rotated & differently cropped OP).

Cheers,

-Michael-

[denise ippolito]

Michael, Seeing the original makes your work even more impressive. TFS.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Nice job, Michael. I really like the final result:)

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Cheryl, Thanks much... & Denise, Thanks again.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Christopher Miller]

Excellent work, Michael. Great HA, and I love all the fine feather detail you brought out.