An Attempt at High Key Birds

[Brownbear]

Thank you John. Very informative and a wonderful thing to share with everyone to learn from.

Go 2. i tried a high key curve on raw. The basic image has a 2 hump histogram. First task was to find a point on the curve to control the darker hump caused by the sand and move the "hump" up in tone level so that it starts to co inside or merge with the other one. Then adjust other points to maintain contrast in the bird which is pretty high key anyway. As the black looked strident I lifted the black point to weaken it. Then decided I will need to do more post raw back tracked a bit to leave some highlight room. I then played with raw settings. Selected restore hsv for sharp detail, digital linear and absolute colorimetric for output. I prefered the colours set like that but feel the sand is a bit of a problem. Saturation boosted as I preferred the look.

Raw curve



It's probably possible to spend 1/2 hr plus adjusting the 2 top points and significant time on the black point.

Result so far



Odd colour balance. Not sure why so thought I would play with that later. The sand hump can be pushed up further.

I tried normal raw plus levels and then curves 1st but not possible for me to do it and lighten the sand. Using curves cleared up the fact that I needed to treat the sand "separately". My son reckons I have created a painting. His comment on the straight raw was where did you shoot that.

John
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[Brownbear]

I certainly hope they ignore your report because the echo of your mentoring voice is a wonderful thing for everyone to hear.

I reported the bug in CiC software that is creating the echo in the room.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say here is the proof... I'm fairly happy with my high key edits considering this is my 2nd try, well maybe my 3rd considering that long ago swan... The black point does make a difference.

The Heron

Processed in Photoshop CC... Strengthening the black point, and lightening the background as per Chauncey's suggestion.


Perhaps not absolute true key but verging on high key... I also desaturated the blues, and increased the saturation of the magenta.



The Egret

A little more challenging and there is some noise in the image which I will fix at a later. Here I also used the curves tool in Photoshop CC to lighten the background but I erased it from the Egret to keep the darker tones.



And voila! A black and white... inspired by Brian



Thank you to all! I feel confident that I know how to do this now, and just need practice, and to develop my vision.

[ajohnw]

More curves and a contrast/brightness change Bright up more with a curve and bring out more detail in the bird with a contrast adjustment. Had to back off the saturation to get an even colour balance so shouldn't have done that in raw. Then did a spot white balance.

Curve. The contrast brightness sliders in this manipulate the curve in respect to mid tones. eg Higher contrast increases an s curve.



Contrast adjustment histogram



It's flattened and extended a bit. It should be possible to do the same thing via ordinary brightness and contrast sliders. It should be possible to do the same thing at the curves stage but the adjustments would be much more critical. To much contrast will make a black spike pop up due to the black on the bird.

Didn't like the sand so selected it and revised rgb roughly for a sort of grey and added a bit of a gradient to try and make it blend in. Still not keen on that part.




John
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[Brownbear]

Thank you John. As always, very helpful to see. I like how you brought out the detail on the Egret.

[ajohnw]

Thank you John. As always, very helpful to see. I like how you brought out the detail on the Egret.

Biggest problem is I have concentrated on the bird and not kept a close enough watch on what's happening to the water. Enlarged it now looks like a bird superimposed on a not too good painting

John
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[Brownbear]

The water is definitely finicky! I find that seems to be the case with most bird shots with water in them so I never sharpen the water or do anything with it, except most recently in waterfalls using curves to bring out more detail. I'm still not so sure about my water in this image either. It's kind of a funny shot with blurry white water because I was low down and at f/7. Something to learn from.

Biggest problem is I have concentrated on the bird and not kept a close enough watch on what's happening to the water. Enlarged it now looks like a bird superimposed on a not too good painting

John
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[Mike Buckley]

The black point does make a difference...
Strengthening the black point, and lightening the background as per Chauncey's suggestion.

Those changes result in a version of your third image that makes me feel like you knew what you wanted to achieve and achieved it. I can't say that about your earlier versions. I happen to like the the resulting image (and only the resulting image), but that fact is far less important. I still wonder if the black point shouldn't be raised even more.

I have yet to see a version of the first image that works for me. That's because the background is so busy that it is distracting. Especially considering that you like the plain white backgrounds, it's important to either change a background to something that it wasn't in the original scene or to use the Delete key; don't spend forever trying to make lemonade out of limes.

[ajohnw]

Looks like I did a lot less than than I thought to the water. While it is busy I suspect it would be better if it was in focus.

This time I gave raw a +1.5 EV exposure adjustment. The point where I thought the tone variations looked right. Not black points brightness etc.. The histogram was still far short of the right. I then used a straight line curve to set black and white plus sensible contrast levels - a bit steeper in other words but still leaving room on the right. I also added a gentle shallow hump to brighten the sand some what but still left it short of the bright end hump. Then denoise using one which is detail level sensitive. On the last one I noticed that lots of bird detail was lost on reduction so used micro contrast adjustments to enhance it - a bit over the top. This ,meant playing with the noise reduction settings again to get a balance. I then cropped and switched to a destructive package as it tends to be quicker. Bad move on this one. Used curves again. This time I kept the line straight at 45 degrees and created a narrow hump over the sand regions to brighten it up more. Then adjusted it's black and white points to suit. I chose to leave the black a little grey. Setting the white point nicely made the detail in the bird look a little artificial so use a weak median brightness noise filter to soften it. Now I know why the none destructive package has 2 curve adjustments - silly me especially as after resizing, cropping and sharpening I went back to it. There as the image looked a bit flat I used vibrance and brightened until the tail end of the highlights nearly reached the end. It's important to leave room earlier than this stage as contrast etc adjustments need room to work. Push thing up too early and they will clip. I didn't have the clipping indicator on but should have and would have to have checked any channel clipping and luminance. On this shot I suspect any channel would be best due to colour shifts as there isn't much colour there. Normally one channel clipping a little doesn't matter. I also used a LAB adjustment to desaturate the sand. I feel the sand is more of a problem than the water really. Still don't like it. Maybe the best option is to go for a perfect bird or as wanted. select it and have fun finding a glossy white to fill the background with. Colin's flower shot might be a suitable source. Easily obtained with a colour picker. Or shots on the web etc. That will give the rgb mix or hue info etc.



On the other one Mike Ok Christina has produced a nice more or less normal augmented bird shot but that wasn't what she wanted to do. There is an interesting discussion on high and low key in a CinC tutorial that shows pretty clearly what it means. I suspect what is really wanted is delicate result. The opposite of what people are inclined to do to shots. Not sure it is even possible to do that with this one. As to high key there are some useful pointers as to how much and problems with dark areas in the link I posted earlier. I ignored that so results are high key but OTT maybe in the bird still.

John
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[Brownbear]

Mike... Thank you for the feedback. Truly appreciated. Later today I will try moving the black point, and either eliminating the wave background or just try it on another image. I thought the blurry wave would be suited for a dreamy feel but I can see that it just doesn't work.

John... Thank you for your efforts. Certainly an exercise in post processing and also to just know when something doesn't work. Yes, I had hoped that this wave image would be a soft dream like image of the Egret but it is not to be (:... So be it!

[ajohnw]

I was curious about extracting it from the background as colours are so close, Not keen on a white background but extracting it is probably the best way of handling the problems.

Not that I am really suggesting you put it in some place like this.



Difficult to extract. I used a mix of luminosity and hand painting to form a mask to get a completely white background.

John
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[ajohnw]

2 quick herons.

"Normal processing" well mine anyway. Predefined D7000 tone curve for raw which seems ok for D7100. Exposure increase and bits and bobs.



Same shot but heading the same way as the last one you posted



Done by using an inverted s curve to reduce mid tone contrast and desaturating a lot of the colour away. By avoiding the bits and bobs or some of them and doing it this way you might get more along the lines of what your after. The desaturation has reduced some of the sky to cloud level.

I didn't try pushing this one up on the histogram as I don't think it would work so adjusted to use most of it.

John
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[Brownbear]

John,

Thank you. The Egret shot in the surf just doesn't work and I agree that it looks quite odd on a white background. However it also looks odd super imposed on that shot. A whale would likely suit that scene better. Anyhow I've learned a lot from this image.

Yes, I prefer the heron that is not processed normally. Thank you. I feel that I have a far better understanding of how to process high key images and what type of images work.

Thank you!

[Brownbear]

Mike...

Here is the Heron with the black point lowered. Somehow I changed the colour of the sky but that is okay because this image was only an exercise for me to learn how to do high key images and I feel that I have a far better understanding of these types of images, and what works and doesn't. Thank you to everyone!



I couldn't find the swan the Chauncey referred to so I tried it on another swan that seemed suited. Unfortunately I cropped the reflection of the swan while photographing it. However, it was a nice light image with good detail.

Colour... The water was light blue and I think the reflection of the water is on the swan because something is not right about the colour.



Converted to B&W.. but it seems flat...



I've had enough post processing exercises on this subject. But if anyone has any tips to share about the odd colour on the swan, and why my b&w swan looks so dull, I would appreciate it. Just to know for future.

Thank you.

[Mike Buckley]

Here is the Heron with the black point lowered.

I'm sure you meant raised, not lowered. I like that look best of all, but this is a minor detail that is highly subject to personal taste.

why my b&w swan looks so dull

You lost some of the detail in the feathers. Also, when losing the interesting yellow and blue tones in the color version of the feathers, it's generally helpful to adjust the curve to emphasize the white tones. It's counter-intuitive to think that a white bird needs to be mostly grey to emphasize the brightest tones, but that's the case. It's exactly the same situation as post-processing whitewater discussed in your landscape thread awhile back. Last, the beak is a distinct color in the color version that retains interest, so you need to convert to monochrome using a color filter that retains that interest.

I used a red filter to convert the image below and I pulled down the tonal curve just a bit to introduce more greys. I spent no more than 10 seconds on it, so keep in mind that it could still be made a better image.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Mike!

Yes, I meant raised.

I can see how the orange beak and the feathers stand out. I experimented with the colours and I learned how moving the orange slider in the B&W mode makes the beak stand out. I also tried darkening the curve and I see the similarities with the the white swan and the waterfall with respect to the grey tones.

Thank you. I do have plenty of swan images and they seem like great subjects to practice high key on. Albeit it is really hard to select nicely around all their feathers.

Thank you Mike!

And thank you to everyone who took the time to advise and help. Truly appreciated.

I'm sure you meant raised, not lowered. I like that look best of all, but this is a minor detail that is highly subject to personal taste.



You lost some of the detail in the feathers. Also, when losing the interesting yellow and blue tones in the color version of the feathers, it's generally helpful to adjust the curve to emphasize the white tones. It's counter-intuitive to think that a white bird needs to be mostly grey to emphasize the brightest tones, but that's the case. It's exactly the same situation as post-processing whitewater discussed in your landscape thread awhile back. Last, the beak is a distinct color in the color version that retains interest, so you need to convert to monochrome using a color filter that retains that interest.

I used a red filter to convert the image below and I pulled down the tonal curve just a bit to introduce more greys. I spent no more than 10 seconds on it, so keep in mind that it could still be made a better image.

[Mike Buckley]

Albeit it is really hard to select nicely around all their feathers.

This is one of the few kinds of masks that don't have to be particularly accurate. Simply use a brush to select the main areas of the feathers, add more mid-tone contrast and/or apply Local Contrast Enhancement.

By the way, applying a reverse S-curve instead of pulling down the curve as I did might have worked just as well or better. I'm not used to enhancing feather detail.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Mike,

Nice to know. I can see a line on my Swans neck and the reflection from my curves adjustment, but strangely not around the fluffy tail feathers. Perhaps I was just a wee bit tired when I got to this one. Good to know that there is some leeway.

I will also try a reverse S-curve. Thank you for sharing.

This is one of the few kinds of masks that don't have to be particularly accurate. Simply use a brush to select the main areas of the feathers, add more mid-tone contrast and/or apply Local Contrast Enhancement.

By the way, applying a reverse S-curve instead of pulling down the curve as I did might have worked just as well or better. I'm not used to enhancing feather detail.

[ajohnw]

I suspect you converted the colour shot you posted. The problem with that is when going to black and white colour information is lost and that results in a drop in contrast. In this case it looks like you have processed the colour shot for softness as well. Also I seem to see a lightening brush around the neck reflection.

A common way to pre-process before conversion is to use sensible tone mapping well short of cartoon colour style. That can be used to get round contrast loss when it is converted or used afterwards along with the conversion process To do that with PS you need to forget any presets and find out how to drive what's behind that. Can't help there.

This video shows several ways of converting using PS. Also covers why contrast changes and adjust it selectively after a fashion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_l1rDuhliM

I kept a link to his video's as they cover a lot of none PP things.

John
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[Mike Buckley]

Christina,

To add to John's comments, some people like to increase the saturation of the color version as part of making the file ready for converting to monochrome.

Despite all the discussion about monochrome, I continue to think that you're better off deferring conversions to monochrome until you have more fully developed your vision and post-processing skills with regard to color scenes. That's especially true because you tend to prefer color photography over monochrome photography.

[Brownbear]

John,

Thank you for advising and sharing. Yes, I used two adjustment layers, curves and exposure. The increased exposure was to make the blue water a white background and I had a hard time around the edges of the swan against the water. It is something that I need to practice and learn to do well.

Yes, I seem to have a preference for muted colours. Thank you for the link. I will view the video. Appreciated!



Mike,

Thank you for the tip on saturation. I will tuck it away in the back of my mind for future.

Yes, I definitely prefer colour and I'm not ready for b&w. It was simply that something about the colours on the swan didn't seem to fit with the image, likely the blue water I overexposed for the white background... I didn't know how to fix that so I converted it to B&W. Colour challenge solved, only to find new challenges arisen.