Two Rivers National Wildlife Refuge, Illinois

[Jeff Blakemore]

Hi Izzie! So, you asked for some suggestions earlier and I do have a couple.

First, I really like the new conversion on the bridge. The dark road at the bottom helps put the weight at the bottom of the composition and allows the lighter tones moving toward the top to not fly away. The only suggestion I have for this one that I didn't see, but you alluded to, was that it needs a bit of straightening. This can be very frustrating sometimes if attempting manually because pulling or pushing one area may have a negative effect on another. ACR has a great little area in the "lens corrections" section. Choose the "manual" tab. It says "manual" but it's more automated that it lets on. In that tab you can click the "A" to attempt a fully automated straightening. If that makes it go wonky, which it very well may, you can readjust from there with the sliders. You can also attempt a vertical or horizontal automated alignment separately. With this shot, a vertical alignment may be best. Even so, if it's not perfect you can still fine-tune with the sliders. Once you have it aligned like you want, you may want to reduce the scale a bit so that any edges that it threw off the canvas shrink back into it. You will lose some of your overall pixel count, but that's better than an interpolated image IMO. Sometimes, if I think I'm losing too many pixels, I'll start cloning the edges back in when I open it in PS.

For the duck... if that's the color image in the first post, then I don't know if there's a lot of data in there to work with. Depending on your ISO and camera model, you may be able to push that exposure a bit more to see if you can glean a little more tonal variation to work with. I also think that a vertical crop may actually work better on this one too. If you have enough image to keep the duck in the bottom two thirds and get a tighter overall crop on the guy, I think that could help a lot. But, I very well could be the only one that thinks it would be better.

Hope this all helps!

[Jeff Blakemore]

Thank you again Christina for your help...I will re-read this post again later...but in the meantime I was having a hard time uploading that last twin shots because in my files, psd and jpg ones, I did not see any noise. When I loaded it here, it has that noise thingie so I converted that one to black and white. I do not know if it will show any noise once I upload it here but I will check and see...

I have to delete it...it has a noise. I am getting pelicaned out so I will just do another post of two more images in a separate post..

Thanks again for your support and help. I do appreciate it very much learning from you...cheers.

......

Are you uploading full resolution images? That could very well cause it to show more noise in the post because it's squishing all that data down to fit in these areas. Just for posting, try resizing to around 1024 pixels wide. If that's what's causing it, resizing should help significantly.

[IzzieK]

Hi Izzie! So, you asked for some suggestions earlier and I do have a couple.

First, I really like the new conversion on the bridge. The dark road at the bottom helps put the weight at the bottom of the composition and allows the lighter tones moving toward the top to not fly away. The only suggestion I have for this one that I didn't see, but you alluded to, was that it needs a bit of straightening. This can be very frustrating sometimes if attempting manually because pulling or pushing one area may have a negative effect on another. ACR has a great little area in the "lens corrections" section. Choose the "manual" tab. It says "manual" but it's more automated that it lets on. In that tab you can click the "A" to attempt a fully automated straightening. If that makes it go wonky, which it very well may, you can readjust from there with the sliders. You can also attempt a vertical or horizontal automated alignment separately. With this shot, a vertical alignment may be best. Even so, if it's not perfect you can still fine-tune with the sliders. Once you have it aligned like you want, you may want to reduce the scale a bit so that any edges that it threw off the canvas shrink back into it. You will lose some of your overall pixel count, but that's better than an interpolated image IMO. Sometimes, if I think I'm losing too many pixels, I'll start cloning the edges back in when I open it in PS.

Blake -- I use the lens correction inside Photoshop itself not the one in ACR, but I did not use it on that bridge image. I used the Perspective tool in the Edit option instead to correct the middle alignment and try to get the wonky on the left and right lights. I still think it needs a slight bit of rotation as my eyes seems to fall down towards the right or something...I think I must be tired. Thank you for the encouragement on the conversion...my workflow for B/W is to use the Hue and Saturation effect then adjust the image to Nik's Silver Efex and play with the sliders there...sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't. I was asking help because you seem to be adept at it...and you like textures too like I do...I want to get to that point where I will know how much toning and contrast I needed to do to get a better converted output.

For the duck... if that's the color image in the first post, then I don't know if there's a lot of data in there to work with. Depending on your ISO and camera model, you may be able to push that exposure a bit more to see if you can glean a little more tonal variation to work with. I also think that a vertical crop may actually work better on this one too. If you have enough image to keep the duck in the bottom two thirds and get a tighter overall crop on the guy, I think that could help a lot. But, I very well could be the only one that thinks it would be better.

Hope this all helps!

Yes, your suggestions help. You do not seem to have an EXIF viewer. My camera is a Nikon D810 with ISO 800 because it was very foggy that day. I used the full focal length of 500 to be able to see that little duck which cannot be seen really with the naked eye. It was just a little blob many thought was a piece of wood in the water and of course the shape of the water when I pointed it to them. My companions in that trip wasn't photography inclined...they chat most of the time and compared notes or something and they were surprised why the eagles flew away as soon as they alighted from their cars. Even my husband noted that...and of course that other weirdo guy who was quiet but taking pictures of us women instead ... .

Anyway, I will try your crop suggestion and see how I go...I took that for the water shape really and the duck head that stops it right in the middle sort of thing only for the water to continue the shape right at the edge of the marsh.

Thank you...thank you so much for your help...I really do appreciate it a lot...

[IzzieK]

Are you uploading full resolution images? That could very well cause it to show more noise in the post because it's squishing all that data down to fit in these areas. Just for posting, try resizing to around 1024 pixels wide. If that's what's causing it, resizing should help significantly.

On my last crop it was 4200 + psd file. I recrop it for jpg at 1200px. Thanks again...I will do that. Thanks for indulging me.