(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
This hawk (or a clone) is seen around our area often – I think it hunts around a neighbor’s barn. By luck I saw it on a utility pole and managed to slither into range. When it took off I was ready and got 3 frames before it disappeared behind trees. This is the only one that didn’t have clipped wings. It was against clear sky and looked cutout (like a previous post of maybe the same hawk) so I went back and focused on the pole and shot the trees it had just cleared, but they didn’t look right. (Too many open branches.) A nearby tree proved more pleasing to change the BG.
Canon R5, 100-500 at 500, f/8, 1/2500 sec at ISO 2500. Minimal adjstment in LR, Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen; BG replacement. Canvas added to accommodate what I felt was the best BG, so the bird is a little smaller here than in the capture.
Hope it posts OK – I’ve been having puzzling computer problems with this web site.
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Hi Diane
The hawk has good color and detail. As for replacing the back-ground, I believe if it can from the same general back-ground and is clearly stated, that photograph can and should be posted. It would be nice to see the original shot. We all know what a bird photograph looks like against a clip white sky.
Nice work.
Peter
Great detail in the hawk; nice to see the tail feathers spread. Good job on the background; the colors fit in quite well with the hawk. Personally, I prefer birds in flight against a background other than clear sky, so I would concur with Peter’s comment.
Thanks guys! Here is the original, but the bird was right against the right edge of the frame and a little too high so I added canvas on the right and top and cropped from the bottom and left so the net size is the same as the original frame.
Looks like you’re getting the hang of your new system, Diane. The hawk is excellent and your background replacement looks very good with no obvious inconsistency in lighting.
For me, your addition of the treed background makes a huge difference. So, again, good job.
Technically, is there a best way to do a background change. I’ve tried it, but it seems very time consuming, as I rarely can get the bird cleanly selected and end of doing cloning to remove bits of sky against the feathers. Thanks.
Thanks guys! @Allen_Brooks, replacing a BG can involve tedious masking. It’s easiest when the BG is a closely matching color, such as adding clouds to a plain sky, but if a lighter cloud area goes behind an area where there was darker sky in the original, it can be some work. One tool that sometimes works in this case is to desaturate blues on the bird, and lighten them to match the new BG better. Selecting a bird in a blue sky is pretty easy by selecting the sky with the Magic Wand, and adjusting the feather and maybe shrinking a bit. Then do a mask instead of a cutout, so you can tweak later as needed. Then drop in the new BG below the masked layer, so you can move and resize it and do any needed adjustment layers above it and below the bird layer.
I think you pulled it off! Good job. Topaz ReMask 5 would’ve made relatively short work of getting all of the little nuances of the edge of the hawk away from the blue sky, then onward to whatever new BG you’d want to try.
Thanks everyone! @David_Schoen, I did add contrast (thus more color) to the tail and it looks good. I won’t bother to repost again.
@Dave_Douglass, I’ve tried Topaz ReMask on and off over the years and have always been disappointed in it. I have only given a cursory try to the latest version so I tried it again here, and the auto masking for both sky and subject failed to get into the narrow gaps between the wing feathers. I tweaked the outline and it was better but not good enough. It also inexplicably dug into the leading edge of the wing right of the head. I had better control with the Quick Selection tool, as I could change the sensitivity and then feather/shrink/expand the selected area. The new PS Select Subject and Select Sky have no fine control and were about the same as ReMask.
A version of ReMask several years ago had a way to refine areas, particularly translucent ones, by carefully brushing over the undesirable areas in a mask-like presentation. That helped but the last time I tried it it was not at all helpful. I didn’t find it here but probably didn’t look far enough. I’ll look at this new version again sometime, although replacing skies is not something I normally want to do.
If anyone can suggest an advanced tutorial, I’ll have a look at it. More tools are always great to have.
