another Texas Cardinal - thank you Julie and Lance
I've been trying to see what Julie and Lance were pointing out on the earlier posting of Cardinals from South Texas. I realized that since my vision isn't great, I've gotten into the habit of checking the histogram, zooming in to see if the eye is fairly sharp, and then looking to see if the overall shape and color is pleasing - but not checking carefully enough about sharpness beyond that -
So I went back into LR and chose a cardinal picture from the wonderful workshop with Alan Murphy (at his setup, with a feeder off to the right) and checked that the histogram showed nothing blown or blocked, and checked that the eye looked sharp. then looked carefully at the feathers around the head and neck. Realized that even though eye and bill and wings were sharp - the feathers around the eye and top of head looked blurred. fstop was low, but it still seemed there should be some sharpness there. Thank you Julie and Lance for pointing that out! Now what can you do to deal with that?
this is what I tried :
1. changed camera profile from adobe standard to camera faithful - immediately more detail, but colors drained out. Upped clarity and vibrance, and then upped saturation just a little for reds and oranges. It seemed wrong, but discovered that decreasing contrast seemed to make the detail come out a bit more too.
2. in CS5, changed to Lab mode and did a curves adjustment to light to intensify the colors more, then played a little with the a channel to increase detail around the head. then switched back to rgb, decreased saturation on reds, and increased saturation just a little on greens. blurred background (going to have to go back and redo that - don't like what it did to some of the grass).
3. getting a bit crazy with post processing now - did a very low level of nik sharpening on bird, did a curve adjustment to increase color in background and saved for web - then ran usm on bird in smaller image.
so after all this - I'm hoping that this is a bit better, but I would love to hear from folk, what are the best ways to deal with getting detail in intense colors? is there something I should have done differently when I took the picture? Appreciate your looking and any comments.
canon 7d, 300mm f/2.8 at 300 mm, 1/2000 sec at f/5.6 +1/3 EV ISO 800, aperture priority.
If you do an in-depth analysis on details, they are nothing but shadows created by each barbs in the feather. When you are dealing with subjects bright red in color they kind of diminish black shades and details wont be visible. Especially in your image on the cardinal crusts and breast areas. IMO it has to do with Adobe RGB not being able to handle such intense colors and dominance of red color. A good wide gaumat monitor makes lot of difference in viewing when it comes to intense red color.
By going into camera faithful we reduce the red color intensity. Later on manually added enough color intensity to keep the details visible.
I also have the 7D and have been shooting standard. I have had a problem with some of the intense colors not showing as much detail as other parts of an image....and have been trying to figure out what was going on.
One pro and author imports his images with the preset in LR3 to general zeroed and then brings the color in through his processing. On the surface, that seemed a bit extreme but I have found it useful on some images
Will try your suggestion-also saw another pro in Costa Rica that was using Faithful-and I could not figure out why.
This is a quite outstanding image Pat. I love everything about it. I will say it does look like one of Alan's setups but that takes little away from it. Even though the bird is centred, I like the crop because it highlights the weeds so well. The pose and head angle are perfect. I don't very much if any evidence of clipping in the red channel in this one (the previous one you mention did show some of this). Very well done! I would be proud of this image.
hey Sid, thank you - that makes sense to me, though I don't know if its just that the Adobe Regular doesn't handle the way the 7d codes red well? I don't remember seeing this with the nikon d300, but then - i didn't ever take photographs of cardinals with it.
Steve- would love to hear what you find out if you try it. Last night I played with photos of green jays (intense blue and green) an audubon's oriole (incredible yellow) and a very neutral olive sparrow. The differences with going to camera faithful were not noticeable at first glance on the olive sparrow, and helpful but not anywhere as strong on the green jays and yellow oriole. I'm curious about bringing in the picture zeroed --- i'm going to look see if I can figure that out. Envy you your trip to Costa Rica, and that must have given you some incredible pictures to experiment with.
John, thank you very much! I wondered what folk would think about the crop - but one thing I took away from Alan's workshop was to start thinking about the picture as a whole. before this my whole drive was to take the closest, clearest picture of the bird possible. But I really like the way these look, with more consideration given to the environment around the bird.
Desmond, I'm attaching the original before all other processing. I agree with you, some parts would definitely look better darkened. thanks!
Hi Pat. Love the sharpness and pose. Regarding the reds, I feel that you went too far with the OP in your quest for detail. I much prefer the second version, which looks like a Cardinal should look IMO. My personal taste is to crop a little off the left and right.
I have to disagree with Doug. On my calibrated monitor the OP is far preferable and I think more life-like. The repost appears to have lots of clipped reds which I don't think would be produced by your eye if you were viewing the bird live.
another Texas Cardinal - thank you Julie and Lance
Great details !
