pied-billed grebe - difference in texture front to rear

[pat lillich]

I really love these guys - but i haven't gotten a picture yet that looks right. there seems to be a difference in the texture of the feathers on the head and chest of the birds, compared to the very fine fluffy feathers on the rear. And somehow in every picture I take, the front always either looks out of focus, or smeared, or too rough.

but this one was sweet and best i've gotten so far - so i figured i would post and ask for advice.

to try not to overexpose the whites in back and the bill, the front is somewhat underexposed. and I ended up making a new layer from a copy of the white rear and doing linear burn to tone them down a bit more. I tried to bring up detail in the front with s/h - but at that point it already starts looking harsh.

any suggestions to improve this are greatly appreciated. I'll start by saying I wish I had swapped a lower ss for more dof. and i would like to sharpen the face a bit more, but it looks wrong when i try.

Thank you for looking.

7d, 400 f/4 DO, 1/1250 sec at f/5.6, iso 800, manual, hh

[Doug Brown]

Were you going for something more like this? That's a tough exposure, with the darks in the shadows and the white rump in the sun.

[pat lillich]

Doug - when I took it, I liked the colors and the white flash at the back, but when i tried to postprocess i hit problems and can't tell if the texture of the front of the bird is wrong, is too harsh because of the low exposure? What you've done IS better - the white is less bright with more detail, the shoulders are lighter.

I wish I could see better - the water seems lighter too. Did you do a curves adjustment? I wonder if de-saturating the blue would help overall.

Could you tell me, would you have passed this one by? I liked that turn back and open mouth, but he had of course moved the front of his body away from both me and the light.

thank you for looking - i really appreciate your help! Sure wish Alan and I could go to yours and Jim's flight workshop in July!

[Ben_Sadd]

Pat,

I like what Doug has done and in fact I don't dislike the deep blue.

The pose is nice, although a touch more head turn towards us would have improved it.

I think you could possibly crop a bit from the top to make it less square and the birds eye less centred.

Finally, I would consider doing something with the "second" eye in the reflection.

[Mikko Viljamaa]

This would be a keeper to me Pat because of the bird's slightly unusuall pose. And if this would be mine I would crop this from the top...


Mikko

[pat lillich]

thank you both Mikko and Ben, and I see what you are saying about cropping the top a bit and can easily do that. I wonder what caused the second eye in the reflection - that is strange, it doesn't look like there is enough of a ripple to do that! will see how it looks to either remove or fade it.

appreciate your help!

[Julie Kenward]

Pat, I also love the grebe's so I'd fight for this one, too! I have Viveza, a plug in from Nik Software, that allows you to add a target point to one specific tone or color and change it without affecting the rest of the image and without leaving a selection "border" around it. I used it to help even out the exposures here - bringing up the dark part of the neck and lowering the lighter part...lightening up the back and lowering the white fuzzy backside.) I also used the paintbrush to soften some over exposed areas and to blend some areas together.

For the water, I changed the hue, saturation and luminosity (hue/saturation layer) to get it back to looking more normal. I then selected it with the magic wand tool and added a small amount of surface blur (5 pixels/3 threshold) to even out the color and soften it overall. I also cloned out the second eye on the reflection by cloning and then blending at 50% between the two areas of lighter/darker.

Finally, I used Topaz InFocus to do some minor sharpening on the bird only and this is what I came up with.

Yes, you can do all these changes in PS without the additional plug ins but the plug ins (IMO) are so much better and so much faster that I invested in them and have never regretted it. PS does so many things well but other things not so much and I go to plug ins when I have to.

Here's the final that I came up with.

[pat lillich]

Julie - that is even better on the front of the bird! I believe we actually have Viveza, but I've never figured out how to use it ---- however, looking at your image, I want to learn. I know I watched their introductory video when we got it, but somehow couldn't interpolate from that to a real image. will have to try again.

on your version, the color of the head flows more naturally into the body - which makes it look much more correct. And I do like the water less intense.

thank you so much for your suggestions - now to go see if i can follow thru -