Grey Heron

[leslie1283]

I photographed these two pictures just before sunset.

I think the color of these pictures is very dull. Is there any way/suggestion to improve them? May be change the color of the sky..Thanks in advance.


#1





#2

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Leslie,

It might be possible to improve them a bit.

The sky is about 1.5 stops under exposed, what does it look like if you correct that, and add some Local Contrast Enhancement (LCE)?

It may get noisy and I suspect there's not much detail to be seen in the Heron.

A Photoshop whiz could probably replace the sky easily enough, but it would still be a silhouette and that means it isn't really a shot of the Heron, more of the scene - and I suspect there are better potential compositions than it about to fly behind a tree. Sorry to be blunt.

In my experience ...

I'm afraid these come under the category of "if only"

"if only it hadn't been silhouetted against the bright (if dimming) sky"
"if only it had had the sun shining on it"
"if only it had been closer"

you get the idea?

Just get out there again and keep shooting, this is all good experience

An example from my archive:

I don't consider this to be good, but it has a few more factors in its favour, but I still say;
"if only we could see a bit more of the Heron's shape"
"if only the fence mesh wasn't so obvious"

Hope that helps,

[Shadowman]

Something's wrong with my monitor, I don't see any color.

[AndrewMcD]

I can't possibly add anything to what Dave has said in his thoughtful response.

Dave - How are you able to determine that the sky is 1.5 stops underexposed? I'm not questioning your comment just trying to learn how to determine such things.

[Geoff F]

I think, Leslie, I would play around slightly with some tighter cropping, but not too much, then add a fraction of highlight brightness to produce an interesting silhouette effect.

The focus and general composition is probably good enough for this to look perfectly acceptable.

[Dave Humphries]

Dave - How are you able to determine that the sky is 1.5 stops underexposed? I'm not questioning your comment just trying to learn how to determine such things.

Hi Andrew,

No worries, that's a good question.

Roughly speaking, the middle of a histogram is 2 stops down from white (on the right), so if we look at this one:



We see that the peak representing the sky is just to the right of the middle, hence my estimate of 1.5 stops, assuming we would want to expose the brightest thing in the shot as almost white.

From study of EXIF data, I believe the camera (D7000) has automatically exposed this without any exposure compensation (EC) being applied, which is why it set the sky mid-grey - that what the meters will do when viewing this scene. A quick assessment and some experience would cause me to spin the EC wheel to give such a scene +1.5 or +2 stops, doing so would have given us more levels of pixels to work with under the wing and body, giving a better result than is possible now.


Above I said:

The sky is about 1.5 stops under exposed, what does it look like if you correct that, and add some Local Contrast Enhancement (LCE)?

It may get noisy and I suspect there's not much detail to be seen in the Heron.

So I had a play in ACR (Adobe Camera RAW - yes, on the jpg) in Photoshop CC.



You can see before and after, the new histogram, the adjustments I made (click to enlarge) to extract some detail from the Heron. In ACR, I used the Clarity slider in place of the LCE I suggested.

I have to say; there's more detail there than I expected, so I learnt something too

It turned out there was no significant cloud structure to be seen in the sky, it is very flat, so as you can see, I gave it the full 2 stops increase in exposure, which, combined with raising Shadows by 50% and Clarity by 100, produced something - I'm just not sure about the colour of the 'thighs' though, UK ones aren't usually that orangey/brown colour.

If it was shot RAW (12 or 14 bit), Leslie may be able to get a better result from adjustments like these, as I only had the 8 bit jpg to work from.

Hope that helps,

[chauncey]

Post processing is the greatest thing since sliced bread!

[leslie1283]

Dave,
Very comprehensive explanation & helpful advice.

[leslie1283]

Andrew,
Thx for viewing.

[leslie1283]

John,
Thx for viewing.

[leslie1283]

Geoff,
Thx for your comments.

[Wavelength]

i liked both the versions- the one winged and two winged appearances; and yes. boosting the contrast would enhance the appeal

[Dave Humphries]

Two things that have just occurred to me looking closely at the After shot, you nailed the focus and the panning Leslie, the eye is visible and sharper than many of mine.

[leslie1283]

Nandakumar,

Thank you.

[leslie1283]

Dave,

Thank you. This is the best I can do for #2

#3

[bnnrcn]

Hi Leslie. I don't know if the bird has really reddish brown and orange colours but you can change hue,saturation and luminance for each colour with PP . It is possible to do it with ACR . I think you have the same options in LR5, because people in CIC say that ACR and LR5 are same as each other

Dave,

Thank you. This is the best I can do for #2

#3

[leslie1283]

Binnur,

Thank you. Actually, I adjusted the colour slightly to make it reddish brown.

[Wavelength]

Now this has more life

[leslie1283]

Nandakumar, thank you.