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Thread: Avocet (Casper grows a little)

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    Forum Participant Richard Unsworth's Avatar
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    Default Avocet (Casper grows a little)

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    Hi

    Back at Marshide Reserve yesterday was pleased to see my little buddy doing well, infact now starting to look well on the way to fledging
    Taken from the hide, which faces into the sun.I was amazed to see almost all the water in the lagoon has gone so they will be moving on soon.

    The pic is 85 % of the OOC camera image, cropped to reposition a little.
    Processed in Topaz, NR to BG only, Topaz detail for micro contrast.
    Slight S&H adjustments PS5

    cANON 40d, 100-400 + 1.4
    1/800, EV -.33, ISO 400, f 8

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    HI Richard, I like the compoisition you have chosen and the muted colours. As presented, the chick isn't that sharp, so I think you could run some more sharpening there.

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    Hi Geoff

    OK couple rounds of USM; these soft downy critters are the worst

    Thanks

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    certainly better on the chick, although maybe a little strong around the eye. The extra sharpening does seem to have produced some artefacts in the background. Maybe you can run the sharpening on a new layer and mask off the background. This is my usual technique and I prefer smart sharpen to USM. Sometimes the results are also helped if I run a high pass filter (about 5 pixels) on a duplicate layer first, which is blended in overlay mode, at about 70% opacity onto the layer below. I believe that is actually similat to USM, but perhaps more controllable. Doing it before smart sharpen and merging it down seems to give smart sharpen more to work with.

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    Not a fan of Smart S Geoff

    pm me a full walkthrough if you likeand I will have a go.

    As stated in the first post I had used Topaz detail which is not my normal workflow, just trying it out as its free for 30 days, the micro contrast obviously bumps pixels around.
    I will reprocess the chick as per my normal flow ie usm etc and see how he comes out

    If others would like to chime in here it would make an interesting topic?

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    HI Richard,

    Might as well keep the discussion here for all to see!

    I've had pleasing enough results with smart sharpen, and often use it alone. I do normally do it on a duplicate layer so that I can mask the effects on OOF backgrounds/foregrounds after running the sharpening. My settings are about 100-120 % on 4-5 pixels with a small radius, when I have the full 12 megapixel image. If I've cropped I may need to reduce the settings to avoid oversharpening, and lately I've had success with upsizing back to 12 megapixels after the crop, then keeping my usual sharpening settings range.

    Roger Clark has a lot of interesting sharpening info in threads in general discussion. What does sound interesting is that the Richardson-Lucy sharpening algorithm is now available in Topaz In Focus, which I plan to check out.

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    Ok

    Here is a repost

    This time I did not use Topaz Detail 2

    On duplicate BG layer

    1. Quick mask bird
    2. Inverse and ran Topaz Denoise on BG only
    3. Inverse, 3 passes of USM at 125, 0.2, 0 as per Digital Basics
    4. 1 pass USM 125, 0.2, 0 on jpeg

    my normal WF

    Not keen lol

    BTW I read all those posts fascinating stuff; I too will look at Topaz In Focus!
    Last edited by Richard Unsworth; 06-21-2011 at 07:08 AM.

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    the chick seems less sharp than in your first image! Something must be going wrong here! (maybe in the posting to BPN step...)

    FWIW I never use quick masks or USM. My flow in brief:

    Duplicate background layer twice.
    Run 2-3 pixel gaussian blur on uppermost layer as noise reduction if I feel it's necessary. Add layer mask and paint main subject with black brush.
    Run smart sharpen on the layer below, which will then show through the masked hole in your upper NR layer.

    (Any healing brush, patch, cloning is done on a new layer to avoid problems)

    Flatten image, save, downsize in either PS or other handy program and post to Flickr!

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    Correct less sharp, but I doubt uploading is the issue

    you WF is fine, I sometimes use those options, but my preference is USM, Quick Masking or selection Tools
    there are some good NR mask actions around to usable on the bird itself if necessary.

    I just used SS on Casper the result is poor

    Just going to d/l In Focus and give it a whirl

    enjoyed the exchange, might get interesting later when those over the pond wake up

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    EDIT:

    oversharpened repost removed!
    Last edited by Geoff Warnock; 06-21-2011 at 08:00 AM.

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    Well the thing is that image had micro contrast adjustments in Topaz D and was sharpened already with USM!
    son its one well sharpened image (halo)
    I sure dont mind you having a go but best take him down before you edit post privelege runs out on BPN
    i AM LOOKING AT IN fOCUS AS WE SPEAK SEEMS INTERESTING

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    Been a good exchange Richard, sounds like you have all the options to test in any case! Have fun!

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    Richard, good comp. I am a little surprised that it did not come out of the camera sharper...its a small crop as you say. I have never used 100-400, so am not sure how good the IQ is with 1.4x. I'd have hoped to see better IQ esp. at f/8. I will let the 100-400 users chime in.

    Other than that, the light angle, head angle and shooting angle are all a little less than ideal. I hope you get more chances with good light angle and then go super low on the shooting angle.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaustubh Deshpande View Post
    Richard, good comp. I am a little surprised that it did not come out of the camera sharper...its a small crop as you say. I have never used 100-400, so am not sure how good the IQ is with 1.4x. I'd have hoped to see better IQ esp. at f/8. I will let the 100-400 users chime in.

    Me too -or not.
    I am using A1 servo, Auto WB, TRIPOD !

    Other than that, the light angle, head angle and shooting angle are all a little less than ideal. I hope you get more chances with good light angle and then go super low on the shooting angle.
    Yes into the light, no comfy beach to get to let alone lie on - looking out of the hide slatted windows, no access other than that, absolutely no chance of going low, and sun directly or just off to front - wonderful conditions. But it's take them or not and he needed to be captured at least for posterity and RSPB records
    I wish it were not so, in fact I have asked that ground level portals be put in so photographers can do just that.

    Thanks for posting, much appreciated.

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    Last repost

    A sharp as I can get, lower brightness and contrast improves it IMO

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    sharpness is good in the latest repost. well done.

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    Thanks

    now if I could only remember what I did lol (joke)

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    I like the re-post..... he sure is cute

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