White Dove

[Clive Kirby]

Hi
Before and after processing of a dove. I've taken shots like this before and ended up losing all the feather detail. I ended up underexposing the shot, but have processed it to bring back the detail. Any ideas on how I might improve my techniques?
regards
Clive

[Brownbear]

Hi Clive,

Beautiful Dove, exposed very nicely... I prefer the original because the Dove in the 2nd image appears just a little clipped on it's back (bright white parts)

In Lightroom 4 I am able to use a selection brush to increase the exposure (or decrease) in select areas and I wonder if you can do the same in your post-processing program to just lighten the sky and the leaves.

[Brownbear]

Hi Clive,

I hope you don't mind but I tried an edit of your Dove, because I think it is nice and also because one of my goals is to improve my post processing skills. I am not at the level where I can explain what I would do, so I just tried an edit and wrote down the steps. If you prefer that I did not try just let me know and I will delete the image, no worries at all.



I imported into Elements 9.

Selected around the Dove as carefully as I could, which is still not perfect as it is hard to do.

I inverted the selection and applied the preset lighten shadows curve to the background and then I increased the brightness of the background.

Then I inverted the selection again and applied the mid-tones curve preset to your Dove and an unsharp mask of 100% with a radius of .3 to your Dove, only...

Then I healed out just a few bits of the branches, but not all because I like the way the branch on the side frames the Dove. Then I cropped to a square shape.

[Clive Kirby]

Christina
Thanks for the input. Appreciate the time you put in re-editing to illustrate your point.
It's not clipped on the whites, but I know what you mean, it does look like it on my laptop screen, which isn't good at distinguishing extreme whites and blacks. Overall I think you are right the dove is too bright.
I do like your version, I think the optimum would be somewhere in between our efforts. I think you were right to edit the subject and background/foreground separately. I started by adjusting the levels of the whole image, which is why the leaves are so dark as well. I then tidied up a bit, applied unsharp mask to increase the contrast a little and lightened the head, which had become to dark.
I use paint shop pro, not as good as the adobe family, but far better value for money.
I think I'll have another go editing the dove and surround separately. You might have cropped it in a different way if you had started from the true original so I've posted the uncropped original. Apparently I'm not posting it, the "upload" button doesn't appear to be working again!!!
regards
Clive

[Brownbear]

Hi Clive,

It's a beautiful bird and your focus and exposure of the Dove is perfect. Yes, it was the bright bits in your edited version that I was trying to avoid. Hopefully someone with more post processing experience will chime in to help.

[Downrigger]

This is nicely fixed by Christina, using software and comprehension I do not have but my question is this: How to get a more desired exposure in the first place? I am guessing that shooting against the bright sky results in an evaluative metering creating overall decrease in light in the image (as with snow shots) and that adding an EV or so when shooting against bright sky might give a result requiring less manipulation. Is this thought on the right track, anyone?

[chauncey]

Suffering from my usual "hoof in mouth" disease...
I could offer exposure advice only if you have a camera that offers a histogram in Live View shooting.
That said, improving on Christina's edit would require various masks and whatnot within Photoshop.

Generally speaking...with white things, a darker background will make the image "pop" more.