Carolina Wren

[KevinStohlgren]

Hello,

Here is a Carolina Wren from my backyard.

Sony A300, Sony 70-400G (@400), 1/320, f5.6, ISO 800, Aperture priority (+1/3 exposure bias), tripod

Cropped (~90% of original), levels, curves, USM

I appreciate all comments on the photo (I know it is a little soft around the eye) but I am posting this mainly to ask a question. When I finish editing and sharpen, the dark areas (the brown back and tail on this bird) get noisy. Am I over-sharpening? Should I only sharpen the head and leave the rest alone? Is running noise reduction and sharpening only cancelling each other out?

Thank,
Kevin

[Joel Eade]

Kevin,

There is no doubt that too much noise reduction will reduce detail and too much sharpening can increase noise, the challenge is not only how much you use these tools but also at what point in the workflow.

This particular image will be difficult because the light seems to be coming from the side and slightly behind your subject. You were unable to resolve fine detail in the back and tail possibly due to this, so you probably will not be able to do much more with it than you have already done because those areas are in relative shadow.

That being said....If an image needs it, I will run a very gentle pass with noise reduction first, follow that will your other processes and then (again as needed) apply sharpening last. I still struggle with the sharpening, my eye seems to like images sharper than most observers for some reason and I think uploading images sometimes changes the way they look to my eye as well. So you have to experiment. I like Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen at 0.2 pixels and you have to vary the percentage to your taste. With Unsharp Mask I use a threshhold from 4 to 7 most of the time.

After final sharpening I will often run noise reduction just on the background.

[Kerry Perkins]

Kevin, good advice by Joel. It is best to use NR very early in the workflow, as it can reduce the amount of work that other filters and adjustments may do and keeps the image cleaner for your sharpening, which is typically done last. Sharpening and noise reduction are not cancelling each other out, as NR attempts to reduce random pixels (noise) and sharpening adds local contrast to edges. However, applying NR on top of sharpening will definitely soften the edges. The best method is to select your subject (and perch if appropriate) and make two new layers. Run NR on the background only and then sharpen only the other layer. It is important to make two new layers, and not try to just make one layer with the bird plus the bg layer. You need the bg layer in the stack to keep the edges of your selection looking correct while your filters work on the other two layers.

[KevinStohlgren]

Thanks for the replies guys. Sorry for not getting back to you as I have been in the field.

I have been working with the bird and background separately (with an original background copy as well). In this photo, NR was applied to the BG which looks fine for my tastes. There was no NR to the bird/perch, only three passes of USM at 125%, 0.2 radius, 0 threshold. The other adjustments mentioned in the original post were made to the whole photo.

I tried redoing this photo with selecting out the head area and running 2 passes of USM (at the same levels) on that selection and then one more pass on the whole bird perch and the back and tail still look a little grainy.

As you mentioned Joel, the side lighting caused a lack of detail in those areas so maybe it would be better to not sharpen them at all or sharpen at a smaller amount. Would running NR on the bird early in processing serve any purpose? There was no noise in these areas prior to sharpening. I am getting the impression that people avoid using NR on the subjects in general or am I wrong about that?