(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Nice pose and pleasing diagonals in this image. Image quality on the red plumage could be better so I would increase my f-stop by half to one. I think you could clone away the Holly and stem going through the beak and still have an effective image with the remaining red berries. The balance appears to be a tad bit off with respect to composition; more space on the right side for the bird to look into and less on the left.
Hi Wayne. I agree with David’s comments above. The only other thing I can see is that the sharpening software you’re using doesn’t seem to be working to your advantage. Parts of the woodpecker look excellent and other parts lack detail which should not be the case given your settings. Also the right end of the perch looks badly smeared, which I think is coming from the software as well. A great pose and beautiful head turn.
Hi Wayne. What’s your workflow? The issue might be something as simple as the order in which you do things.
Hi Dennis, I download my images into Lightroom , use light levels to bring up exposure and cropping. Then move the photo to Photoshop for other editing such as additional cropping and any cloning required. I also make any tone adjustments here and then use Topaz Denoise and then save the work in .jpeg file format. I usually save in .tif file format when not saving for sending via internet. Diane has given me prior suggestions concerning problems with .jpeg and cropping issues.
Thanks,
Wayne
Sure like the setting, John, maybe more so in the original. Nice pose and nice look at the woodpecker. Hopefully others will have suggestions on the background issues.
Beautiful frame, congrats.
Gorgeous bird in such a pleasing setting! Good job cleaning up the stem behind the head but I don’t mind it --it gives you 3 bunches of berries. Having more on the right would be good if there wasn’t something too distracting there.
The issue with uneven sharpening would be because the JPEG itself has been sharpened in-camera and the Topaz NR software will offer to sharpen even more. It won’t hold off for areas that are already too sharp. You could do NR on a new layer and mask out the over-sharpened areas. If you’re only using Topaz DeNoise, you could pull the sharpening slider to 0 and see if that’s better.
And to stick my neck out – if you’re using LR, why are you shooting in JPEG? You are giving up so much tonal control to in-camera software that can only make adjustments based on averages. The raw files from the camera contain a lot more information and would greatly mitigate posterization. It will show more (be more coarse) in a big crop, but it’s not the crop that is causing it – it is the 8-bit capture of a JPEG not having enough tonal steps for any tonal modifications. A raw file will give you much more leeway to bring out details in lights and darks, and will allow better noise reduction and sharpening.
You can always set the camera to Raw + JPEG to see a comparison.
Diane, Thank you so much for taking the time with my post. Always appreciate your helpful input. From my reading on NPR and others there seems to be some correlation between Photoshop and its problem with tonal variations, and as you suggest, .JPEG files especially in 8bits color. I ran across an article by Max Bridge on banding/noise which helped some ( https://www.slrlounge.com/remove-banding-photoshop/ ). Diane, all of my photos are in RAW + .JPEG at 16bits from camera to Lightroom. I’ve learned not to “denoise” nor to “sharpen” in Lightroom before moving my files over to Photoshop where I check exposure and other tonal attributes including final cloning artifacts out and cropping. My last and final stage is using Topaz Denoise with my RAW files. From your suggestions the Topaz Denoise might be the culprit as I usually move the slider control over beyond the suggested automatic setting. Always trying to get the perfect representation of my subject. Error of my ways. My next step is to resize my photo down to about 7 x 5 JPEG print in order to have NPR accept my file, then to my “Potopolish” software for my watermark/logo.
Diane, you have been so kind and helpful. I appreciated all of your comments. Wish my old mind could absorb better. I don’t give up easily though.
Thanks,
Wayne
I see now I didn’t read the fine print, and thought you were shooting in JPEG. Big apologies!
I always save my master file as a layered .psd (.tif is equally good). When I am ready to post somewhere I resize and save a derivative file as a .JPEG, preserving the master file for any future editing or use. The paint never dries. Almost every time I open a file that was done more than a couple of years ago, I wind up reworking it from the raw file with the better tools we have now.
That is a good article about banding – thanks for posting it!
