The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This was my first field trip with a new camera body and the first time shooting a horned lark. They were very flitty and hard to capture so I was pleased with this one.
Specific Feedback
Not much experience with snow - color?
The background was very busy, I’m learning to do masking in Photoshop (thanks to Kris Smith!) and tried to make it so there was some context and not just a single big blur.
I think this looks pretty darn good. The slightly open beak is nice and I like how much detail you have in the throat feathers. Such a fluffy little thing. The breast and side feathers match the snow nicely. The very nearest breast feathers seem a tad soft, but they could be since they need to poof up to stay warm. The bg looks nicely oof, but recognizable as more of what it’s standing on and the blending looks natural - the gray zone! Funny, I think we both put up bird pics in the same minute!
The bird has very nice detail and I think the snow is gorgeous!! (But then I haven’t seen snow since I gave up skiing years ago with foot problems. Killed me to quit and would have killed me to keep going.)
It looks like you blurred the BG – not just the mask, but the look of it otherwise. Try this idea – use the same selection and do a bunch of ~50% opacity cloning to clean up (ssoften) the worst contrast areas, then try blurring that. I always get a more natural look that way.
Nice catch Debbie - a bird I rarely get to see so this is a real treat. I can’t tell you manipulated the BG so this looks natural to me. You could go further using the suggestion Diane gives but I think this result is pleasing as is. I like the open beak you caught and the puffiness of the bird is nice. Snow seems a little bit gray to me but that could just be the light angle. Nice capture.
If I follow Diane, it’s similar to what we did with blending from the bird layer to the blur layer only more selectively. So black mask on the blur layer, low opacity brush and paint with a white brush on the most distracting/crunchy areas in the bg. I’ve done this before as well and it makes for a more nuanced blurred background rather than a uniform one. Does that make sense? Am I having a mind meld with you Diane?
Sounds like we are, @Kris_Smith, but I missed exactly what was done here - was that something from a previous image? (I’ve been 101% into eclipse planning and getting a little buggy…)
Can one of you run through the steps to get here? My clue of masking used is the appearance of the BG, which looks slightly blurred but in an artificial way, and the relatively sharp outline along the top of the head and back, which gives a cutout look. Not big issues but I’m guessing there is a more subtle treatment.
What Kris describes is a valuable technique but I’ve found gives a more natural look is to do some ~50% opacity cloning before doing a blur. Then often also more after the blur.
Low opacity areas usually look awful, but with cloning (with appropriate brush sizes) you are in effect being a painter.
I’ve always found Gaussian to be good but haven’t really compared the others.
That’s how I do it – copy the BG (or a composite layer above it if you have other pixel layers you want to keep), then blur it then apply the mask. Then you can tweak mask edges going to Quick Mask Mode and using a brush.
I see what you’re saying. I like to keep a little context behind subjects instead of making the backgrounds too smooth, but I will adjust this a bit. Thanks!
I like context too – this is just a way to make any blurring more natural, if needed. A lens always gives blur due to DOF constraints and sometimes it is not attractive, especially with a close BG and bright light. The quality and amount of the blur varies with the lens and the aperture so there is no good argument for accepting it because that’s the way it was. It is rarely if ever how the eye would see it. I’m just talking about a way to control the quality and amount of blurring – when needed or desired.
Here’s what I’m talking about – just an idea, to illustrate a way to minimize the way the X-patterns in the BG compete with the subject.
And on opening in PS I see there is no embedded profile. For the most accurate appearance on different browsers, a JPEG for an internet destination should be converted to sRGB and there should be a place to specify to embed/tag the profile.
@Diane_Miller I see what you’re saying. I’ll try it.
And, I have PS set to ask when opening about profiles, I’m not sure why it keeps not saving them with a profile when I tell it ‘yes’ to convert to sRGB. Should I set it to Convert to Working RGB too? And in LR it’s set for sRGB in exporting. What am I missing?
The setting to ask about profiles when opening is the right thing to do. The the correct choice is to convert to your working space. Doing that will make the histogram accurate but won’t affect the colors you see on your monitor! (Go figure! I’ve been doing color mgmt from the time it was invented and it doesn’t make rational sense to me, either!)
I use LR and when a PS file has gone back there (it will be in Adobe RGB or sRGB or ProPhoto RGB, whichever the working space is), I choose an Export preset that specifies convert to sRGB, and it automatically embeds the profile. That sounds like what you are doing so I don’t know how the profile is getting stripped out. In a minute I’ll check some of your previous posts to see if that is happening regularly for you. (You can do the same.)
To export a JPEG for the web from PS, I use File > Export > Save for Web. It has a checkbox to embed the profile. I think one of the quickie choices doesn’t.
@Diane_Miller I just opened this image in PS and it said ‘no embedded profile.’ In my export dialog (I use Export > Save for the web too as I’m a web developer) I’ve always had ‘Convert to sRGB’ checked, that’s never changed. I exported the lark and closed it. When I opened it again it said ‘The document does not have an embedded RGB profile’ and it again asks me if I want to ‘assign working RGB: sRGB.’ I don’t get it…
Wait - I found it! ‘Embed Color Profile’ is unchecked in Save for Web. Is it possible to make it checked by default? Or do I have to check this every time I export?
The setting has always been sticky for me – on a Mac. But who knows about computers these days… I just spent an hour with a local Mac troubleshooter logged in figuring out that my computer had been brought to its knees because every file I had recently deleted from LR was not actually being deleted on the disk!! A while ago it stopped dumping them in the trash but they supposedly were deleted. Not so!!!
Updated to the new version first thing tomorrow – supposedly a “minor” bug fix!!
I had to come to a stopping point, I feel like I could keep spending time on this and not get it the way I want it to look. I think the background looks muddy now, somewhere in between the original and this would be better. This isn’t how it was to be there that day.
