Background Noise

[Ian Cassell]

I liked the bird, but not all of the stray ones on the ground. I decided to try my hand at major grounds cleaning here and hope that it worked.

Bosque del Apache - Last week
Canon 7D
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L
1/3200 sec f/7.1 ISO 400 HH

Large amount of cloning of geese and cranes on the ground (the ground was essentially all white and grey up to the level of his tail), levels, sharpening in CS5

[Ian Cassell]

For comparison's sake, here is the original

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Ian,

Always enjoy these incoming BIF pictures. The techs look good, the 5.6 400 prime is a great flight-lens. I like the feather detail in the wing and the whites look good. The clean up looks good,..additional color blending or smoothing would make it stronger.

One more of these Bosque shots and I am heading west the areas looks so inviting and love the habitat.

[Hayath Mohammed]

Very nice final result!
Liking that wing position showing all that front-momentum

Cheers,
Hayath

[Ken Watkins]

Ian,

You have done fine clean up, but I agree that a little more work onn the white patches may help. The pose and angles are great

[Paul Guris]

Great shot of the main subject. The only spots that stick out a little for me from your background work are the darkish areas under the bird's right wing and left foot, but I may not have even really given them a second thought if I hadn't known what you did.

[Brendan Dozier]

BG issues aside, this is a really nice in flight capture, Ian. Wonderful pose, light, and exposure. Good suggestions and repost looks good. Nice work.

[Randy Rimland]

excellent feather detail and love those feet

the cleanup looks very natural

[Ian Cassell]

Thanks for the comments and ideas. I'll play a bit more with smoothing out the BG. This was a project to improve my cloning skills.

Jeff, by all means head to the Bosque!

[Brendan Dozier]

Another route you can take is using a Gaussian blur on the BG. Not only can it help to even out distractions of a BG, but it also acts as a noise reducer.
Removed the bird from BG, saving a copy, then did content aware fill to the empty space and blended it in with spot healing brush. Dodged some of the darker areas to lighten them some. Selected middle part of BG, copied & pasted to layer, the moved it to cover the white birds below. A little more blending of any seem with spot healing brush. Applied Gaussian blur to the whole BG, and place bird back onto BG.

[Ian Cassell]

Brendan, thanks! I like your result very much. Thank you for taking the time to demonstrate! I'm going to have to try it myself to see if I am able to duplicate it. I'm very un-skilled with CS5 and am still trying to figure out all of these tricks.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

That's what I has in mind when I mentioned additional blending or soothing - well done Brendan.

[Bill Dix]

Terrific incoming shot, with good wing detail and exposure. Very nice repost by Brendan.