I don't normally PP much

[ScoutR]

OK, everyone it should be there now. I this particular album listed as Private. That explains why I could see it and Moderators could see it but no one else could. The pics should show up now both here and in the mini comp. I hope....makes sense so it should work.

Thanks to everyone who pointed this out! I would have never realized
UMMMM one more thing, could you let me know if it has worked.

Wendy

[PopsPhotos]

I see it now. I did have to do a refresh from the browser click to get it. I'll go check your mini comp after a few.

Pops

ETA: Your picture shows in the mini after I refresh at the browser level.

[ScoutR]

Many thanks for your time and help.

Wendy

[Colin Southern]

Well done, post #6 gets my vote (sorry Colin)

How'd I do with this one Dave?

[Dave Humphries]

How'd I do with this one Dave?

Much better, but, if I maybe so bold as to tell it how I see it.

There's a definite white ring around the bird and other sharp stuff from sharpening. You'll see similar on some of my shots too, sometimes its unavoidable, especially if working from a jpg original. This is all the more visible because you have rightly kept the snow down from being peak white.

It's also just a tad noisy, Neat Image would fix it easily.

The other observation about the image as a whole is that all the distracting stuff in the background wouldn't be an issue if the ground were not snow covered, because it would merge in quite well. For the "ultimate result", I guess it could be cloned out, that's a fair bit of work, but not impossible given the uniform snow background.

Cheers,

[Dave Humphries]

My bluff has been called (I guess I asked for it)

I have the RAW and will post my version later.

Just saying this publically so I can't quietly 'forget'

I know what I'm like

Cheers,

[Dave Humphries]

Ok Colin,

It was tougher than I thought, and no doubt took me longer, for perusal, I present 3 takes;

Original composition with basic tweaks to compare with Colin's


Original composition minus cloned out distractions


New composition minus cloned out distractions


Do give an honest opinion, if mine 'suck' say so (but gently huh)

I accept the cloning isn't 100% perfect (about 75%), no doubt I'd try harder on one of my own images
For example, I can see where I missed a bit in the middle shot

Anyway, I did learn stuff with selections in sorting out the basic exposure, etc. for the bird and feeder, so it wasn't an unproductive use of my time

Oh, and I didn't even need Neat Image, the noise was successfully remoeved by ACR

If you say you like it, I may even reveal what I did I made some notes of the salient points

Cheers,

[ScoutR]

There's a definite white ring around the bird

Dave: I don't see this white ring. I even copied the photo so I could zoom in. All I see is a teeny little bit of white on the underbody just below and to the right of the wingtip. Just a short little bit, and then the white that I see is feathers. Am I missing something here. You said definite white ring. I see the noise, but not the white ring.

I need to know because, I get this all the time in my photos. If the white ring in this photo is definite on your screen, mine must look like aurora borealis.

Wendy

[ScoutR]

If you say you like it, I may even reveal what I did I made some notes of the salient points

Yes, I would say I like your final version the best. I have some ideas on what adjustments you made, but would like to hear what you actually did.

The cloning seems to have blurred the birds tail a bit. It was fairly sharp before the clone, but now it's blurry. Can that be corrected?

Thanks to Pops, Colin and Dave for this exercise. I've found it very educational. I wonder if anyone else is helped out by these experiments. Maybe the moderators could set up some kind of a weekly or monthly challenge to work on stuff like this. Would anyone besides me be interested??

Wendy

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Wendy,

Dave: I don't see this white ring.

I have crudely doubled it in size to make more obvious.
This was a screen capture.

It is most noticeable on this part of the bird.

To put it in context, you should have seen some of my early attempts at sharpening, I only got this good with Colin's help, so I feel a bit of an ungrateful b***** for pointing it out.

EDIT:
For comparison a similarly double sized screengrab of my version form the first (comparison) picture above. I think the results show I had less radius and amount in the correction and a whiter white, which hides much of any white line I would have.
I think, in hindsight, I needed a slightly higher threshold too Colin's is cleaner

Cheers,

[Dave Humphries]

Yes, I would say I like your final version the best. I have some ideas on what adjustments you made, but would like to hear what you actually did.

The cloning seems to have blurred the birds tail a bit. It was fairly sharp before the clone, but now it's blurry. Can that be corrected?

Would you believe it, I think I forgot to do the final sharpen on that last image - it's not in the history and I still have the file open, the last thing I did was re-size

Thanks to Pops, Colin and Dave for this exercise. I've found it very educational. I wonder if anyone else is helped out by these experiments. Maybe the moderators could set up some kind of a weekly or monthly challenge to work on stuff like this. Would anyone besides me be interested??

Stirrer!

I'll get you back for this

(only kidding)

Cheers,

[ScoutR]

Ok, I see what you mean. That's standard on most of my photos only 10x worse, anything dark on a light background. It drives me nuts. Sometimes right out of the camera, but sometimes after my wild attempts at PP. So are you saying that (in some cases) this is caused by oversharpening?

[Donald]

Thanks to Pops, Colin and Dave for this exercise. I've found it very educational. I wonder if anyone else is helped out by these experiments. Maybe the moderators could set up some kind of a weekly or monthly challenge to work on stuff like this. Would anyone besides me be interested??

I'm not sure whether a regular weekly/monthly exercise or an 'as and when an issue arises' approach would be better. Having a number of people (experienced and less experienced) work on the same image, sharing knowledge and learning, is certainly a powerful way of improving.

[ScoutR]

I'm not sure whether a regular weekly/monthly exercise or an 'as and when an issue arises' approach would be better. Having a number of people (experienced and less experienced) work on the same image, sharing knowledge and learning, is certainly a powerful way of improving.

I'm just thinking, based on the fact that not many people are jumping in with critique when issues arise is that an assigned exercise might get more participation.

Normally, I would not be as bold as I've been this week. I would wait for everyone else, and lurk. I'm off work right now though, and the weather has been bad and I'm bored, so I've taken a chance and jumped in and tried to learn something at the risk of being a pest.

I've learned a lot as a result. Personally, I find this type of sharing and exchange has been more helpful to me than anything else. I'd just like to see more participation.

Wendy

[ScoutR]

EDIT:
For comparison a similarly double sized screengrab of my version form the first (comparison) picture above. I think the results show I had less radius and amount in the correction and a whiter white, which hides much of any white line I would have.
I think, in hindsight, I needed a slightly higher threshold too Colin's is cleaner

What I see now is that the snippet on the left has a very slight white ring. The snippet on the right has a very distinct black line, that does not look natural to me, but in the scaled down version, I suppose would provide more definition. I'm a little lost with the technical data, but I know that it is helpful to others.

The question, I'm getting at is whether the black outline in the snippet on the right is what you were aiming at or if that is where the threshold adjustment comes in? I'm not trying to be nitpicky, the reason I ask is that I have had varying degrees (all of them a LOT worse) of this in many of my photos. When I figure out how to fix it I will have lots of work to do.

Wendy

[Dave Humphries]

Yes, I would say I like your final version the best. I have some ideas on what adjustments you made, but would like to hear what you actually did.

Ok, here from a few notes, is what I did.

Opened the nef in ACR
'Shift+left mouse click' to do a white balance dropper on snow, this changed the As Shot WB; 5200 and -9, to 5700 and -19.
Auto, then make other adjustments which resulted in these:
Basic Tab -
Expoure: +1.45 stops
Recovery: 0
Fill Light: 0
Blacks: 20
Brightness: +40
Contrast: +50
Clarity: +60
Vibrance: +25
Saturation: +50
Detail Tab -
Sharpening
Amount: 15
Radius: 0.5
Detail: 10
Masking: 0
Noise Reduction
Luminance: +100
Color: +100

Open Image (in PSE6)
Capture Sharpen with USM: 200%, 0.3r, 2th
Levels: set grey point at 1.7 (to lift the bird)
Convert to 8 bit depth (have to)
Make a Layer, work on that from here on in (allows one to switch it off to compare back to original)
At this point I made a selection of all the snowy areas including all the background stuff, leaving just the bird and the feeder out, then I inverted it.
Thus most of the following was applied to only the bird and feeder.
Local Contrast Enhance: USM 35%, 160r, 0th
Levels: set white point to 215 (again to raise brightness of dim bird)
Deselect, so back to the whole image now...
Local Contrast Enhance: USM 15%, 100r, 0th

After here, I did multiple saves, with undos and resizes, clones and crops.

In common I did;
Resize (bicubic) to 1099 to match Colin's (except my crop; 1000)
Final output sharpen with USM: 150%, 0.3r, 2th
Save As (jpg) at quality 9 (of 12)

To be honest, it's still a bit dark on the bird for my liking.
Trying to "bodge it better" at the end just ruined it, so I undid out of that and decided to live with it.

Cheers,

[ScoutR]

Thank you very much. I will use this pic and your notes to practice. I will be working on the jpg. but that's not a problem, it will get me going through the motions in Elements.

Colin: I hope you don't mind all this fussing around with your original.

Wendy

[Dave Humphries]

What I see now is that the snippet on the left has a very slight white ring. The snippet on the right has a very distinct black line, that does not look natural to me, but in the scaled down version, I suppose would provide more definition. I'm a little lost with the technical data, but I know that it is helpful to others.

The question, I'm getting at is whether the black outline in the snippet on the right is what you were aiming at or if that is where the threshold adjustment comes in? I'm not trying to be nitpicky, the reason I ask is that I have had varying degrees (all of them a LOT worse) of this in many of my photos. When I figure out how to fix it I will have lots of work to do.

"VERY SLIGHT"!!!

Sorry, my eyes are (perhaps too) atuned to these edges.



In fact the picture on the left has distinct white and black edge to it if you look closely, just the white is more noticeable.
With mine, the amount and radius are less, but also, as the adjacent white is already approaching the clippers, so the black is more noticeable. It's not what I was aiming for, it's a fact of life.

You get both black and white edges because that is how USM sharpening works; it "exagerates" the luminance levels in both positive and negative directions at edges, the 'height' of exageration is determined by the Amount (in %) you set and the 'width' of the exageration is set by the Radius, keeping width (aka Radius) substantially below one pixel is key to keeping it from being too visible. Be mindful of that Detail tab in ACR, or it will be applying (at a 'too large' 0.5 radius) more than you want

See the tutorial by Sean for a better explanation with diagrams showing the 'exageration' I discuss above; "overshoot" and "undershoot" (in the diagrams) are the white and black edges we see in the snow/bird boundaries.

The bottom line
The improvement I was hoping to obtain over Colin's in the white edge issue escaped me, especially if you mega pixel peep as we are here. However, viewed at normal resolution, I think (hope) I did just achieve an improvement on 'the old masters' first attempt, but it wasn't easy and I'll think twice before ciriticising next time

Retiring with a 'bloody nose' from the first round.

Cheers,

[Dave Humphries]

Thank you very much. I will use this pic and your notes to practice. I will be working on the jpg. but that's not a problem, it will get me going through the motions in Elements.

Colin: I hope you don't mind all this fussing around with your original.

Wendy

Well, it's actually Pops original.

I think working from the jpg will be an unfair (to you) restriction, I only had a go because Colin sent me a link to the nef RAW in a PM.

Cheers,

[PopsPhotos]

WOW! I did not expect such a ping-pong session when I posted the first one. This is GREAT! Thank you to all.

I have learned much just from this session, and even more from all this site. I'll be exposing my students to this site when classes start again, mid January.

I suspect I'll continue shooting in JPG, Fine, Large, as my copy of Photoshop 7 doesn't like my NEF files from my Nikon D40. I can open them only in Picasa. The type of shots I take with the D40 are not usually as detailed as these, so it doesn't matter that much (I think.)

I have been wandering about on the net, looking for ACR and notice that is is included in Photoshop Elements 7 and above. However, my copy of the full Photoshop 7 appears not to have it. Verrrrrry Interrrrresting. The "reduced capability" PS Elements7 has it and the "full capability" PS7 doesn't? hmmm I can't afford a copy at $100US at this time, but I'll be looking on ebay and the free download sites for a copy.

I would be interested in an occasional thread of this type, but I suspect Colin and Dave would probably get overwhelmed in short order.

Again, thank you for this. I have learned.

Pops