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Great White Egret Question about PP

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
f5fce3da.jpg
I took this about 10 a.m. with 7 D and 400 5.6 L . How can I correct the blue-grey tint ? I have tried desaturation on the blues in PSE 9 adj saturation and it did not look any better. Also tried different W/B from daylight to as shot. Guess maybe sometimes the sun just hits wrong :D
Thanks
Don
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Don,

I love the image! First, the bird is like a an arrow with wings!

The blue doesn't really bother me. The sun has to give a shadow and that and the reflection from the water is blue too.

Nik plugins is good for local adjustment of color if it bothers you.

Asher
 
I agree with Asher - nice capture!

As for White Balance, it should be readily adjustable in Adobe Camera Raw, or whatever Raw converter you use. And actually ACR will allow WB adjustment on a Jpeg, if you didn't shoot raw. The "Temperature" slider will 'warm' up the image when moved to the right.

What software do you use for post-processing?

Perhaps as an exercise, you could post a link to the original image, and we could all have a hand at post-processing.
 

Joachim Bolte

New member
converted the picture to Lab mode, did a little correction that boils down to pulling the temperature a bit more to the yellow, and the tint a bit more to the magenta. After that I darkened the top an d bottom part of the image to give it some dynamics, and finally I sharpened it just a tad.

As you will notice there is still blue from the refelction on the bottom of the bird, that's natural. The top of the bird is now more neutral, even a bit warm, because the sun is striking directly there.



After that, I started to irritate myself on the red hue that is left on the birds wingtops, so I took another go with a method in RGB that I also use for correcting underwater pictures. I like the result better on this one. It hasn't got the darkened top and bottom, but that can be applied easily later on.

 

John Wolf

New member
Hi Don,

What I would probably try here is masking out the bird. Masking is hard but the bird's edges are pretty well defined and you'd only need get close to the edges. That would allow you to work independently on the bird. Maybe desaturate the blues?

Another benefit of this approach is that it would allow you to play with the background separately. Darkening the sea, for example, would make the bird pop even more.

It's a beautiful picture and well worth the effort.

John
 

Joachim Bolte

New member
No real neesd for masking here, the sea suffers from the same cyan cast the bird does... If you would want to work on the background seperately, I would first make the corrections, and after that mask out the bird using a painted layer mask, not an 'all around' selection. Saves a lot of time.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
converted the picture to Lab mode, did a little correction that boils down to pulling the temperature a bit more to the yellow, and the tint a bit more to the magenta. After that I darkened the top an d bottom part of the image to give it some dynamics, and finally I sharpened it just a tad.

As you will notice there is still blue from the refelction on the bottom of the bird, that's natural. The top of the bird is now more neutral, even a bit warm, because the sun is striking directly there.



After that, I started to irritate myself on the red hue that is left on the birds wingtops, so I took another go with a method in RGB that I also use for correcting underwater pictures. I like the result better on this one. It hasn't got the darkened top and bottom, but that can be applied easily later on.


Joachim,

What a great job! Each has advantages and setbacks. But that's inherent in choices between "good" and "good". (It doesn't take much smarts to choose between good and bad, LOL!)

Why not combine the two? The sea from the CMYK is more dramatic and then use about 20% of the CMYK bird as one really wants to keep some of that rose color on the wing edges. These birds do indeed pick up colors from the sky and sun so to remove them entirely might not be the best idea. When we look at the bird flying past, we don't see the subtle colors. However, Monet would have discovered and kept them!

Asher
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
Don,

I love the image! First, the bird is like a an arrow with wings!

The blue doesn't really bother me. The sun has to give a shadow and that and the reflection from the water is blue too.

Nik plugins is good for local adjustment of color if it bothers you.

Asher

Thanks, Asher I really liked the wings as well and you clearly explain the reason for the blue tint on them.
Don
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
I agree with Asher - nice capture!

As for White Balance, it should be readily adjustable in Adobe Camera Raw, or whatever Raw converter you use. And actually ACR will allow WB adjustment on a Jpeg, if you didn't shoot raw. The "Temperature" slider will 'warm' up the image when moved to the right.

What software do you use for post-processing?

Perhaps as an exercise, you could post a link to the original image, and we could all have a hand at post-processing.

Thanks, Don and I was down at Litchfield Beach for the family meet up a few days last week and did not see many birds behind Inlet Point . Did see one Ibis but could not capture it.
I got this near the oyster recycling area (which is actually part of the park ) on the edge of the salt marsh as I did not want to pay 5 dollars to go to Huntington Beach Park since it seemed the birds were not around :D .
Yea, I have LR 3 .
Off topic, since you know that area check out my photo of the old truck in landscapes I really thought it was cool looking.
Don
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
Hi Don,

What I would probably try here is masking out the bird. Masking is hard but the bird's edges are pretty well defined and you'd only need get close to the edges. That would allow you to work independently on the bird. Maybe desaturate the blues?

Another benefit of this approach is that it would allow you to play with the background separately. Darkening the sea, for example, would make the bird pop even more.

It's a beautiful picture and well worth the effort.

John

Thanks, John and I am glad you liked it .
Don
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
something like this? :) Lab-space and CMYK have nothing to do with each other, by the way...


Joachim , I appreciate you looking at this in detail . That last one really looks nice and I can get LR to look pretty close to the second edit you did . I have a lot to learn about PP .
Don
 
Thanks, Don and I was down at Litchfield Beach for the family meet up a few days last week and did not see many birds behind Inlet Point . Did see one Ibis but could not capture it.
I got this near the oyster recycling area (which is actually part of the park ) on the edge of the salt marsh as I did not want to pay 5 dollars to go to Huntington Beach Park since it seemed the birds were not around :D .
Yea, I have LR 3 .
Off topic, since you know that area check out my photo of the old truck in landscapes I really thought it was cool looking.
Don

Love the truck shot!!!

Huntington can be quite productive, but obviously dependent on time of year, weather, time of day, etc. As with most other places, dawn and dusk are best, as are fall and spring.

If your travels take you in that direction again, and you might have time to do some shooting, let me know - if I'd be available, it would be fun to go down and shoot with you!
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
Love the truck shot!!!

Huntington can be quite productive, but obviously dependent on time of year, weather, time of day, etc. As with most other places, dawn and dusk are best, as are fall and spring.

If your travels take you in that direction again, and you might have time to do some shooting, let me know - if I'd be available, it would be fun to go down and shoot with you!

Don, I appreciate it and last week also got up at 5 o'clock to capture underneath Pawleys Pier at sunrise and will post them later .
Sounds good and I finally got a 7 D that works a lot better with the 400 5.6 L over my little XT and allowed me to get a shot of a Mourning Dove with moss in the tree.
Don
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
8e475ee6.jpg
I reworked it and used the graduated neutral density filter tool in LR to darken top and bottom . I think it looks better then my original .
Don
 

Joachim Bolte

New member
... I can get LR to look pretty close ... have a lot to learn about PP

You might, but keep in mind that Lightroom is primarily a piece of image management software with with a little bit of the PP-powers of full-blown photoshop. Most of the tools that are in LR only work in a simple linear way, if you want something special, do pixel based editing, complex curve editing or complex masking/blending, you will need to fall back on a dedicated image editing package.

nonetheless it is impressive to see how far the adjustments go using 'only' the LR tools, your picture has improved massively. Especially the use of the grad-ND filter makes a huge difference by giving a suggestion of depth, and focussing the attention on the bird as a subject.

If you want to give even more suggestion of 'movement', you could try to crop the image a bit ( to 16:9 ratio) so that the bird is (even more) off-centre, at about 1/3th of the images width from the left edge.
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
Joachim, yea I have PSE 9 but have not made the big jump to full Photoshop. It is nice to hear from those that are skillful with it about the details of my photos.

Don
 
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