Great Blue Heron and Re-post x2

[Diane_Miller]

Desaturation can kill things. Compare the Heron’s colors to Chris Cahohan’s post:

Lovebirds

[Lovebirds] During the nest building stage of courtship, these two will act like high school sweethearts on a first date…there is a lot of “emotion” in their every move. Specific Feedback Requested The issue I had with this shot was balancing the BG with the birds. The BG is naturally light and darkening it takes all the attention away from the two Herons. Lightening more than I did looks terribly contrived. I think I’ve gotten it to a place that uses the best of both worlds, but would like …

Try a Selective Color adjustment layer and go to the blues and maybe neutrals and play with tweaking the colors. If it messes up the BG, try Select > Subject and mask, maybe at partial opacity.

Or go back to the raw file and optimize for the bird’s more natural color then deal with the BG in PS if its not right.