Hi David. This image has really cool action and excellent composition, but it looks like it’s suffering from the same blurring issue as the second image in your previous post. There is a significant blur halo around both birds. I don’t think it’s the same issue, but there’s also some banding in the green background and I’ve always had great difficulty figuring out why that sometimes shows up. It shouldn’t if you’re doing your processing in a 16 bit color space, which I know you are, so it almost has to be from the jpeg conversion when you export for the web.
It’s a little too early for Goldfinch youngsters. This is a female telling off the male.
yes Dennis, I also saw this and couldn’t figure out whether it was part of the background or a halo. I reprocessed it and used the latest version of Photoshop beta along with DXO.
You could help me out here by figuring out why this is happening and what I’m doing wrong I would really appreciate it seems to be an issue.
A gorgeous capture that is suffering from something in processing. Looks like masking. The posterization in the BG is something I haven’t seen before and there is a very odd area just in front of the female’s breast. Give us your detailed steps, both with and without DXO. Is the image above still the one without the DXO processing? What was the difference when you re-processed?
How are you exporting the JPEG? I use a preset for LR and it has always been bulletproof. And when I do a rework, unless I’ve cropped the two will show at the same size for easy comparison.
all right. I generally open up an image in light room classic. It is then moved directly to D XO where it undergoes some minor adjustments which include brightness, shadows, etc. I send it to another part of DxO where the noise is removed. I don’t think I do any sharpening. It is then exported back to my room where more adjustments are made including de hazing and vibrance. It is then opened up in Photoshop 2024 or 2024 beta, where cropping is done.
I then used Topaz AI and then select in focus area on the image, invert that area, and do a light Gaussian blur. I really like to have some texturing my background. Allen has also seen these grayish halos and has no idea where they come. The final image is turned into a JPEG via TKA nine. It is then posted to the web. the first image I posted, the original, was done without DxO.
This gives the BG a little texture.
On the windows version 2024 (not beta) I do not find Select>Modify>Blur but I did a field blur on this version.
What do you think?
This is looking very nice! Select > Modify > Blur only works with a selection in place, to alter the selection itself. There are several ways to modify the selection in there.
This looks good, David. There are still signs of the blur if one looks closely, particularly at the tails of the birds which the “select” function is horrible at defining well. The problem I encounter with all the selection tools in PS is that they seem to have a built in radius defined and I have not been able to find a way to change it. It’s usually larger than I want it to be so interior angles never come to a point the way they should unless you go back and modify the selection somehow with one of the manual selection tools. One of the other problems with tails is that they are often a bit or a lot out of focus and that really screws up the selection software (and makes it difficult to do manually as well.
For those reasons, I don’t often try to blur my background unless it’s really ugly. When I do I usually use the blur brush in PS. I have no idea what algorithm it’s using, but it doesn’t seem to cause halos. I’ll select the subject(s) including the perch and copy and paste them to another layer, then go back and start blurring the background on the original layer (or on a blank adjustment layer). I’ll try to avoid problematic areas like tails when I do so.
You asked for help figuring out what’s going on with your process. I’m pretty open next week except Thursday and early on Friday, so drop me a line and I can come up and look over your shoulder.
Looking at this more carefully, I have to ask why you feel the need to blur the BG? (What does the file look like as it came into LR?) You are running into all sorts of selection issues that are causing nothing but grief. (And don’t feel special – good selections are almost always very difficult.)
I often find details I don’t like (OK – hate!) in BGs but they are often isolated and I can usually deal with them by painting repeated strokes of cloning with a brush that is soft by its size and its opacity. I clone from different directions to paint over things I don’t like. The hard edge that a lens can give to OOF branches drives me nuts.
It takes a little hand work with a mouse but you can do repeated strokes and Ctrl-Z to back out of quite a few steps. Accepting the BG you have as realistic is better than an artificial-looking result, and so much easier!
Diane
I suppose you are correct. I really don’t need to blur my backgrounds to make them look better. The selection process is haphazard. What I have done in the past is pretty much what you are doing, but not to the same degree. I guess I need to understand how to use the brushes to make them softer and to make unwanted items blended better.
In any case it was an experiment. some of the items worked really well but others failed.
Like your latest photo.
David
By the way, Dennis is going to come over and help me out. Sometime in the next few weeks.
When you select either the clone brush or a regular brush (for painting or tweaking a mask) the 3rd icon from left on the top row opens sliders for size and hardness. For painterly cloning use a largish brush at maybe 30-50% opacity and change the sample point for each brushstroke.
And now Generative Fill is mind-boggling, for those hideous bright branches that subjects just love to pose near. I just used it on the Palm Warbler post. I nearly fell out of my chair at what it came up with.
Great ideas, Diane - but I find using a pen and tablet - like the Wacom ones - absolutely indespensible. There is a learning curve, but the pen is extremely precise, when a mouse is not. I have never known anyone to go back to using a mouse, after learning the pen/tablet method
