Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Low light July morning at local beach. Six terns feeding on a small lagoon.
Any editing suggestions .
Z9, Z100-400, 560mm, iso10000, f/8, 1/2500sec
Topaz Photo AI
Another nice tern image, Dan. The plumage detail looks pretty decent in this one for that iso, but you might want to keep playing. I have seen some people who can really make those noise reduction/sharpening programs work at high iso (I’m not one of them).
Considering that it is often cloudy on the Northern Olympic Peninsula in the mornings when the birds are most active, it is hard to catch a bird in flight without the ISO going very high. The noise reduction programs tend to soften the sharpness and reduce texture in the feathers. Does anyone create a subject mask and add texture or clarity to restore some of the detail. Is there a better program than Topaz AI?
Hi Dan, nice in flight catch with the fish and trailing water drops. Another fine capture.
I have had consistent results using DXO PureRaw 3 for processing high ISO images using the Canon R7. I have used it up to ISO 4000 on the R7 which is a crop sensor. I’m not sure how well it would do with the full frame Z9 and higher ISOs but I think DXO offers a 30 day free trial. I would turn off the optical corrections using Deep Prime XD as the results rendered with that module are just too crunchy at times. DXO produces a dng file which can then be edited in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). Then once in Photoshop, I use Smart Sharpen with the output file from ACR.
Another option to try is the relatively new noise reduction feature in Adobe Camera Raw. I’ve read this also seems to give consistent results but I’ve never tried it.
I’ve tried the LR AI based noise reduction and gotten pretty good results. However it’s a “start it going, go get a cup of coffee” operation on my machine.
Thanks - I will give DxO a try.
The head and prey unfortunately are slightly softer than the rest of the image. Play around with Topaz to get the get the best results. Love the pose and the tern is placed perfectly in the comp…Jim
