Carmine bee-eaters - C&C welcome

[davidedric]

Love these birds! Would you try and edit out teh red in the background, which is more carmines in flight?

Dave

[Ziggy]

Yes I would.

[ScoutR]

Great shot. The expression on the birds is so intense. I wonder what they are looking at. They are quite beautiful and cute little guys.

As for the red blurs, I would definitely remove the top one. The blur between the birds does not bother me so much, and looks like it would be harder to remove, so with my PP skills I would probably leave it alone.

I am also wondering about the crop. I think I would remove about a third of the space at the top which would end up more of 4x3 format and concentrate the eye more on the birds. I'm a big fan of negative space, but to me in this shot it does not provide any context or add any feeling or emotional content to the shot.

Whatever you decide, it's a great shot as is.

[Geoff F]

Yes, I would also go for some form of crop.

If you can manage to remove the red mark above their heads I would do it, although not essential. The red between them could remain without too much of a problem.

[davidedric]

Thanks. I knew really the red had to go - not sure about the crop. Trouble is, I do almost all of my processing in Lightroom, and it's a bit rubbish at that, so it's a foray into Photoshop which I'm very inexpert with.

Photoshop users: would you just try content fill, or something more subtle with an additional layer?

Incidentally ( I do tend to include these lectures), if you look at the bill of the left hand bird you can see some sand. That's because these birds are hole nesters, and every year in September and October they dig nest holes in the bank up to a metre long. Why so long? Because baboons try to reach into the holes to steal eggs or chicks.

Dave

[Dave Humphries]

You'd want to do it on to a new layer anyway Dave.

I'm no cloning expert either, although I may be half a mile further up the road than you are (currently).

I did initially try using ACR's spot tool, equivalent to what you'd know in LR, but you're right, it's too basic.

So I spent a few minutes on this in PS CC, but it really needs 'doing over' as it incorporates a few mistakes and has hard edges where it needn't.

Didn't try the blob between them, but that should be possible too, as you may decie that now, without the other, it is an issue after all.



If you'd like me to remove this unauthorised edit, just say the word.


Showing the grey cloned in area lives on a separate layer, most of which is transparent, allowing the birds and rest of image to show through.



Cheers,
Dave

[Shadowman]

Nice shot.

[Jim A]

Lovely sharp shot, Dave. +1 to Wendy's comments.

[Wavelength]

What a beautiful birds.... and a really well done capture!!! Sure, the reds must go...rather completely

PS: You got more than eye contacts; they are really speaking something with their glowful eyes!!!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Dave,

Looking at it again this morning (ooops, afternoon) and thinking about it some more ...

I wonder whether the red blob I removed shouldn't be clone moved to form a third element/point of compositional interest somewhere in the negative space, to balance the pair below.

Just a thought,
Dave

[davidedric]

Thanks all for the feedback, and Dave for his suggestions (No problem at all with the edit). When you (Dave) suggest moving teh blob to negative space, are you thinking of forming a king of triangle?

Just off to "edit in Photoshop"

Dave

[Geoff F]

There are many ways to achieve this desired result. Just use the method with which you are most familiar.

[Dave Humphries]

~ When you (Dave) suggest moving the blob to negative space, are you thinking of forming a king of triangle?

in a word; yes

[davidedric]

There are many ways to achieve this desired result. Just use the method with which you are most familiar.

Trouble is, I'm not familiar with any of them! This is an attempt by selecting and pasting area I wanted to change onto a new layer, and painting over with a colour selected from the original. Once again, thanks for the help.

Dave

[davidedric]

Incidentally, the EXIF shows some of the processing, but the RAW conversion was done in DxO. Given that this was shot with m4/3 and cropped, I think it did a good job.

Dave

[Cogito]

Can't work out why you and Dave want to leave the red blur between the birds ...

[Geoff F]

That remaining patch could be removed but it will be rather tricky and require some accurate selecting/masking. It will very easy to mess this up and create an obvious looking patch which would be worse than leaving it alone where it doesn't cause too many problems.

I would probably have a go with the 'improvement' but this isn't really a job for the faint hearted or anybody inexperienced with these techniques. However, when working on a copy of the image it would be an interesting learning curve.

[davidedric]

That's exactly it. Beyond my pp skills

Of course, if I had half a brain, I'd have shot in burst mode and probably avoided the problem. Trouble is, I was fixed on this pair and didn't think about the couple of hundred others.

Dave

[Geoff F]

I have had a quick go at editing that bit between the birds, Dave.

A bit tricky due to the soft edging around the birds.



Created a selection around the problem area, using the auto select brush and a bit of fine tuning with positive/negative brush options. Then created another selection just to the left of the left side bird and cloned from that into the selected problem area. Used the + brush setting to make the second selected area interact with the problem selection.

Also cleaned up around the head of the right bird where you had left a tiny bit of the red area.

[Rob Ekins]

Nice work Geoff, well done!