Post your best bird shots!

[Dave Throgmartin]

Joel & Bob,

Any chance you could post any of pics above prior to editing them? I'm curious how much improvement you made in PP versus the original picture.

Dave

[ddt0725]

Beautiful Joel! So, I assume you have applied the same technique to a certain degree as Bob on the flying birds?

[Joel Eade]

Beautiful Joel! So, I assume you have applied the same technique to a certain degree as Bob on the flying birds?

Thanks Denise, yes I did.

In general I do the following (more or less depending on if I think the image needs it)

1. Convert from RAW using ACR where I adjust color temp, exposure, recovery, blacks, clarity usually

2. Crop the image and remove any elements needed, dodge or burn any areas if needed (like brightening a bird's eye)

3. Very minimal noise reduction (if needed) on the entire image

4. Levels adjustment layer

5. Selective color adjustment layer or sometimes Nik Color Efex pro

6. Noise reduction, stronger this time, on the BG only

7. Sharpen the image to taste, usually using Topaz In Focus

8. Save a copy as 8 bit TIFF

9. Reduce size to 1000 pixels wide

10. Sharpen with USM at 500% 0.2 pixels 7 threshhold (I may do this 2 or 3 times, not always)

11. Save as jpeg, adjust quality level so image is less 250 kb in size.


These are my basic steps on almost all my images.

I pick out the best RAW images so that each step only requires small adjustments.

[Joel Eade]

Joel & Bob,

Any chance you could post any of pics above prior to editing them? I'm curious how much improvement you made in PP versus the original picture.

Dave

I shoot in RAW and the images would be too large ... if you want to see an jpeg converted straight from RAW and reduced in size I can do that.

Here is one....

[Dave Throgmartin]

I shoot in RAW and the images would be too large ... if you want to see an jpeg converted straight from RAW and reduced in size I can do that.

The original is still quite good, but the wings on the top bird especially look much better in the processed version. Thanks for posting the original.

Dave