Advice needed on Background Please

Hi There

Not sure if it should be in this forum or in Digital retouching so please accept my apologies if it is wrong.

I would like some advice / comments on the following 2 shots. They were taken at West Sussex Falconry Centre and are of "Benjamin" a Turkestan Eagle Owl.

The 1st shot has a reasonably clean background but i don't have all of his right wing in shot and his talons are not lifted right up.

The 2nd shot i much prefer the shape of the owl and i have both the wings in (just!!) but i have a rather untidy background.

Not being a "Photoshop Wiz" is it possible to take the owl from shot 2 and put him into the background of shot 1 or possibly use the green out of focus grass as a new background completely. I might not have explained that very well but you can probably get the gist of what i am driving at.

Tech details

Shot 1 - EOS1D MKIIN - 70-200F2.8L IS @ 90mm - ISO 400 -1/3200 @f4 set manually and pre focused on the landing glove using * button set with CF4-3

Shot 2 - EOS1D MKIIN - 70-200F2.8L IS @ 70mm - ISO 400 -1/3200 @f4 set manually and pre focused on the landing glove using * button set with CF4-3

Any comments or advice gratefully received.

John

Hi John!

Yes - it´s possible. But it´s a lot of sophisticated work if it has to be nearly perfect.

1) Clone the background in 1 so that no owl is visible. Cut out the right part of the bg and paste it to the left side and fine-tune it, for example.
2) is more complicated: you´ll have to isolate the owl in 2, extract it and copy it into 1.
The feathers are difficult to extract - try Photoshops "extraction" and do it manually piece by piece.

When i have the time, i´ll try it in the evening and give you an example.

best, Klaus

P.S.: i did a rough extract - to extract precisly you have to have a reall high resolution . . ;-)

Klaus Esser said:

Hi John!

Yes - it´s possible. But it´s a lot of sophisticated work if it has to be nearly perfect.

1) Clone the background in 1 so that no owl is visible. Cut out the right part of the bg and paste it to the left side and fine-tune it, for example.
2) is more complicated: you´ll have to isolate the owl in 2, extract it and copy it into 1.
The feathers are difficult to extract - try Photoshops "extraction" and do it manually piece by piece.

When i have the time, i´ll try it in the evening and give you an example.

best, Klaus

P.S.: i did a rough extract - to extract precisly you have to have a reall high resolution . . ;-)

Click to expand...

Klaus

Even the rough extract looks better than i thought was possible!!

Thats exactly what i wanted to achieve but with the glove showing as well to land on.

I don't know if you or anyone else is up for trying it on the hi res files? i could send either the RAW or large JPG files.

John