Red-bellied Woodpecker and lesson learned or otherwise

[Bobobird]

Following on the gracious tutoring by Colin especially, and others, I picked out another image from that day to work on.

Did it work out?

Views please. Thanks.

[Otavio]

Following on the gracious tutoring by Colin especially, and others, I picked out another image from that day to work on.

Did it work out?

Views please. Thanks.

Yes, without a doubt! Incredible details, Bobo;

Just curious about: How far were you from this beauty and what was the focal length?

Cheers,

[Bobobird]

Thanks Otavio. Appreciate the feedback.

560mm from about 30 feet I think.

[IzzieK]

Lovely shot! I am here to learn too just like you, but is it my computer or my eyes? -- it is sharp all right...can I say, a tad sharp?

[Shadowman]

I take it you are referring to capture sharpening, and yes it worked. Nice image.

[Bobobird]

Thanks Isabel. It could be just a tad but let's not worry about that. It is not going to win any prizes anyway.

Thanks John. It was output sharpening but glad it worked either way.

[Brownbear]

Hi Bobo,

Thank you for sharing another one of your gorgeous bird images, and for sharing learning sharpening. I think this looks pretty perfect, maybe just a tad too sharp, just on the line of where the wispy feathers meet the woodpeckers patterned body, and only when viewed full size. But I'm not sure so wait to hear from others.

[deetheturk]

Superb image Bobo,one i would be more than happy with,but like Christina says, maybe just a tad to sharp?am i seeing a slight halo just on the left side of its head?i only noticed it in lytebox,apart from that its a cracker!

[Rita]

All I can say is 'beautiful image'.

[Bobobird]

Thanks everyone, yes, it does appear a bit off. Guess my eyes are still trying to adjust to that new parameter called output sharpening. Will redo it from scratch and see what comes out.

[chauncey]

Will redo it from scratch and see what comes out

Yes, you could do that but, I fear that you might be approaching that feared obsessive/compulsive disorder area as it's quite nice as shown. For future reference however, explaining posing techniques to the bird might result in a nicer image...like rotating the head about 10 degrees toward the camera.

[GeorgeM]

Nice work, Bobo! The sharpening looks pretty good to me.

[Bobobird]

New do. Don't blame me. It was chauncey who wanted him to turn his head around.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Bobo, I need to go through and see what you've posted lately, have been busy. I want to see what you've done with the new lens, but looking at this shot, I can tell you are nailing it. Great work, and really have improved the shots with the quality gear.

If anyone wants to get advanced with USM (unsharp mask "sharpening"), I recommend learning the following things:
- creating custom edge masks (Once I learned how to do this, I created a pshop action to save time)
- sharpening on a separate duplicate layer set to luminosity with opacity tweaking (made an action again)
- less known, using 'blend if' in layer blending properties dialog to dial off / taper down the pixel values which are sharpened. This allows you to "remove" the sharpening from pixels which are at the highest and lowest brightnesses, thereby reducing over-sharpening of areas which already are very bright or dark. This can be useful if you get hot pixels in high frequency areas such as feathers. You'll want to learn how it works, and split the sliders apart so you are tapering the effect.

[Rita]

Bobo, I am really woking on my editing and I am curious as to which program allows you to move the head around like you did?

[chauncey]

Oh, I think that I'm going to wait for Bobo to answer that question.

[Bobobird]

LOL. I have a secret to share - had to come out sooner or later. There is no special program, all I need is to tell the target and the camera will spit out the required pose. Neat eh?

[Rita]

LOL. I have a secret to share - had to come out sooner or later. There is no special program, all I need is to tell the target and the camera will spit out the required pose. Neat eh?

Very neat

[chauncey]

Ha, what a bunch of bull
He just takes a bunch of pictures in rapid sequence.

[terrib]

It really does work, Bobo. Wonderfully sharp image with a very pleasing background.