Foray into Photoshop

[purplehaze]

While I'm at it, I might as well be brave and share with you my textured hummingbirds.

I caught these, my first hummingbirds, at the start of August. They were a bit out of reach for the 300 mm, so I had to crop the images quite heavily as it was. The sky was a uniform smoky haze, so I decided to apply some texture to give it more interest. Let me know what you think, and don't hold back. I am quite prepared to hear you hate them.

#1


I think maybe the vignette is too heavy on this one.

#2


#3


This one I like the least overall, though I love the bird's pose. I think maybe I should try to get rid of the leaves touching the edge of the frame and reduce the opacity of the texture, make it less heavy-handed.

[Manfred M]

These are very interesting Janis; I think I like the second one best.

I'm not quite sure how you are putting these together in Photoshop, but if these are on separate layers, you could apply an adjustment layer with a clipping mask to the background and darken and lighten it until you get the two layers working together the way you want.

[xpatUSA]

While I'm at it, I might as well be brave and share with you my textured hummingbirds. Let me know what you think, and don't hold back. I am quite prepared to hear you hate them.

#3


This one I like the least overall, though I love the bird's pose. I think maybe I should try to get rid of the leaves touching the edge of the frame and reduce the opacity of the texture, make it less heavy-handed.

Agree about getting rid of the leaves, Janis. In #3 the bird is parked and just a-begging for a portrait,

My two cents:

[pschlute]

I like them Janice. I agree that the vignette is too strong in no.1, and you should get rid of the leaves in 3. Use the "content-aware" fill tool.

It is good idea to get creative with an image if for reasons of aggressive cropping, or too much noise leaves you with a less than acceptable normal image.

Well done

[escape]

Hi Janis,
I like what you did with the texture. From what I recall about applying texture, you put a texture image layer above or below your image, chose a blend mode, and adjust the opacity. That's the basics, as I understand.

The subject image you used are excellent and lend themselves to the process. For me, the leaves in the third image are a plus.

[mugge]

Janis, I like#3 because of the textured background. I would retain the leaves also. It works for me precisely because the image is heavy handed and not neat and stylized as it may become if background is suppressed too much.
Cheers Ole

[purplehaze]

Thanks for the feedback, all. I am going to try to get back to #'s 1 and 3 to tweak them.

[Jim A]

I like No 3 the best, Janis. The background is very nice, as is the bird pose. Whilst the leaves don't worry me too much, they are a bit far from the action. I would try a square crop on it and see how that turns out, but I would not lighten it.