Project 52 by Girish A

[Geoff F]

Possibly a little bit too close for me; otherwise excellent.

[whited3]

Great shot. My only C&C would be that the DoF was a little short in that the edge of her hat is a bit soft.

[Wendy Stanford]

Terrific capture Girish,, excellent focus with great detail, very nice DOF, my only thing would be perhaps a little more space between hat and the frame. Well done, what were your settings, did you zoom from a distance for this one ?

[jeechu1970]

Thanks to all.......Hi Wendy.....this was taken with 18-105 MM lens using 1/125s and F5.6 at 98mm ISO 400 (auto) from a close distance .....it was just taken without any preparation off hand......as she was a stranger just passing across....i requested for a snap and she obliged.

[jeechu1970]

This is Pond Heron........

[Geoff F]

For me, something isn't working right here. I'm getting a visual problem and distraction around the bird's head.

I think it is the background which is too similar to the head colours. It is making that part of the scene difficult to look at closely. And the head area is appearing much softer than it is in reality. The actual bird is well exposed and sharply focused.

I'm not sure what I would do here. Maybe start by running a blur brush around those distracting areas.

[Goldcoastgolfer]

i agree with Geoff - there is something a little weird with this photo. What settings did you take the photo at and what post processing did you do out of curiosity?

[Kathy O]

i agree with Geoff - there is something a little weird with this photo. What settings did you take the photo at and what post processing did you do out of curiosity?

I really like how sharp your photo of the bird looks, but I do agree the background is distracting, I keep looking at the background more than the bird itself. Other than that I think it is a real nice photo!

[annie5154]

Love the bird in the photo but agree with others about distracting background ... but well done

[jeechu1970]

Hi....Thanks all for the comments.............i took the photo in a paddy field......Hi Mal......the exposure details....are F5.6 1/250s with ISO 500 on a Nikkor 70-300 mm Lens....at full zoom. I have cropped the photo and did some basic processing.......I am unaware of working on Photoshop and yet to learn about processing.....i used Picassa software to auto-correct the lighting (as there was not much light) and contrast enhancement.and sharpening tool thats all........ Here is the original photo with just cropping done......hope to get more feedback on processing the photo

[Goldcoastgolfer]

Ah, I see - it was in the way it was processed and I've found Picasa can be a bit heavy with its limited options to post process. Because your bird is the same colour as the background I'd be inclined to just work on the detail on your bird itself rather than the whole image. That will keep your background from being distracting.

I'm not sure you can achieve this in Picasa. Photoshop or Lightroom will allow you to selectively process but if you don't have access to those I believe Piknik is linked to Picasa and is a free, more powerful image editor. There's also Gimp - but I'm not familiar with it.

Good luck!

[Geoff F]

Yes whatever you do, Girish, isn't going to be easy because of the lack of contrast between the bird and background.

I think that the main thing I would do here is to apply the sharpening selectively so as to apply just to the bird not the background.

[FrankMi]

Hi Girish. Because this is your P52 thread, if you prefer I can delete the image (or entire post) and send it to you in a PM.

I hope you don't mind.I played with this a bit to reduce the noise, increase the sharpness of the foreground and Heron, used a gradient to both increase the brightness and blur of the background from front to back and lastly, increased the vibrance of the heron a bit.

I think you have a great subject here and well worth while to play with in post processing. If you would like I can be more specific with the steps I took in Photoshop.

[jeechu1970]

Hi.......Thanks for the feed back..to all of you............Frank.....definitely i dont mind.......what u have done....infact i welcome it. I would be more than happy to know the steps used in photoshop for processing the photo and what u have done........outcome is really good.....as i told, am not familiar with photoshop..or any other processing software.........now am seriously thinking of taking a class on processing.....from some tutor........and will do it early.....so that i can have some better output......i welcome ur feedback.........girish

[FrankMi]

Hi.......Thanks for the feed back..to all of you............Frank.....definitely i dont mind.......what u have done....infact i welcome it. I would be more than happy to know the steps used in photoshop for processing the photo and what u have done........outcome is really good.....as i told, am not familiar with photoshop..or any other processing software.........now am seriously thinking of taking a class on processing.....from some tutor........and will do it early.....so that i can have some better output......i welcome ur feedback.........girish

Hi Girish! I’m glad you like it and are interested in learning a bit of post processing.

Please note that I am using the Topaz Bundle for several of the following steps. All of these steps can be done in Photoshop (or any post processing software that supports Layers and Masking) without the Topaz plug-in but Topaz simply makes it easier and faster to accomplish.

The first thing I did was to open the JPG in Adobe Camera Raw (which comes with Photoshop CS5) and in the histogram I noticed that there were blown highlights in the feathers, beak, and background. To address this I set the Recovery from 0 to 50. There were also blown shadows in the mud at the Heron’s feet so I set the Fill Light from 0 to 30. Even at a Fill Light of maximum there was still blown shadows but as this is not the subject I wasn’t concerned. I then opened the JPG in PS CS5.

In PS I made a copy of the image and opened the copy in Topaz DeJpeg to reduce the noise, then in Topaz InFocus to mildly apply capture sharpening.

Using the Gradient Tool in PS I created a bottom to top, black to white gradient mask for the brightness and blur to be done after I mask out the Heron from these effects.

Using Topaz ReMask, I selected just the Heron and the closest foliage that was at the same foreground focal plane which created a mask to separate the Heron from the rest of the background. I painted this mask on to the gradient mask to combine them.

I can now use a PS lens blur on a copy of the image and only the background will be blurred. Additionally, because of the gradient, the blur will be minimal in the foreground and progressively get stronger the further back (up) the image it is applied.

I can use the same mask to increase the brightness of the background the further back (up) the image it is applied. This will further help separate the Heron from the background.

Now the background is softer and lighter and it is time to turn our attention to the Heron. Because it is masked from the background, whatever we do to the Heron will not affect the background. Here I used a Levels Adjustment Layer to darken the Heron to get a bit more separation from the lighter background. Lastly, I used Topaz Adjust to apply a Brilliant Warm adjustment setting to the Heron to warm the colors a bit and we’re done.



Hopefully, you can follow these steps by looking at the PS levels from bottom to top in the image above.

[jeechu1970]

Thank you Frank.....for such a quick reply........will definetly try to learn from you suggestions.......but am afraid.....whether i can really do it...........but will try it out.............anyway..........thanks

[jeechu1970]

This week i tried my hand at flowers.......close up........C&C welcome

[Geoff F]

That works fine, Girish.

Incidentally, there are a number of threads around CinC at the moment which are discussing various ideas for merging multiple focus points. If you can avoid significant wind movement this would be an excellent test subject; providing you have suitable software.

Just two merged shots of this flower with different focus points would greatly increase the focus depth.

[kezmal]

A lovely photo of my favourite flower I wonder if the crop is slightly too tight on the bottom of the flower, but if the focus is the seed capsules in the centre, you've done well. I like the little droplets of water on the petals too.

[Goldcoastgolfer]

Looks good Girish. I wouldn't have minded seeing the front petal as well but there's plenty of detail to hold a viewer's interest.