I never saw these until Japan recently - a beautiful duck
Fine capture - exquisite detail, colours, and perfect comp.
The sharp splash takes this over the top.
Excellent!
Not intended as a criticism, or even a suggestion, but this image got me wondering if there was an easy way to blur the BG more without losing the water droplets. There is!
A similar species is common here in Korea, so why can’t I get a shot like this? (Don’t answer!). Anyway, you’ve inspired me , Jagdeep. I’m sure you know that the “spot” of its name originally referred to the orange-red one at the base of the bill, and not the yellow tip. Our species doesn’t have this. I love the splash in its slipstream, as sharp as the bird. I’m sure @Diane_Miller will tell how she blurred the BG!
It was easy! I went to Select > Color Range (with Selection Preview as Quick Mask) and checked Whites. Adjusted Fuzziness and Range to get the droplets cleanly masked. OK gives the selection. But a lot of the duck and the main splash was also selected – and if there had been other bright spots in the BG they would be also. It was easiest to go back to quick mask mode (Q key) and paint those areas out with a white brush since I only want the droplets selected. Then I used a ~50% opaque clone brush to paint on the BG to remove some of the detail – being careful not to pick up any droplets. I think Field Blur would also work as it respects selection edges, but blurring always looks phony. Then I boosted the brightness of the droplets a bit with a curves.
There are several variations. The droplets and the rest of the areas other than the BG could be copied to their own layer and then the layer below modified (or substituted) as desired.
What gave me the idea is that it is common practice in astro work to remove stars to enable strong contrast boost on a dim nebula BG, which would blow out the stars, and then add them back. (With astro acquisitions of many short exposures over several hours, stars are not blown out and color is retained. Very cool!)
