Took this photo(I have a few others in the sequence) whilst on holiday in Sri Lanka. Basically I was watching the squirrels feeding at my friends place when this guy appeared from nowhere and grabbed one and landed on the ground. It was close to the garden wall. I slowly came inside, grabbed my camera and fired a few shots before it flew away.
It was too close to the background. I could not affect the background/foreground/subject or reposition myself
After cropping, I have removed some clutter on the foreground, darkened the the background wall and burned some of the grass on the ground.
I have also saturated the birds eye a tad and add USM at 80/0.2 to the eye after downsizing the image
I am looking for some advice to improve this image. Particularly, to clean the background and foreground without doing a composite image.
I 90% of my editing on LR. My photoshop skills are basic but I think this would be a job for photoshop rather than LR.
Your advice is most appreciated. Please do explain steps on PS to me as my skills are basic as I mentioned. I can understand screenshots
Nice capture, looks very sharp and you have good eye contact. Here is what I would do with the background, the foreground seems ok to me but starting with the dark band in the middle I would try to lighten it and then blur it.
I used to have a blur action using PKsharpener that I used for this but it was 32 bit and I lost it when I upgraded to 64 bit. Since I don't do birds anymore I don't need it.
But some around here are good with it. You do need Photoshop I think because its a layer/mask/brush type of job. I don't use LR so I am not sure what it can do.
Somebody will suggest putting the eye at the rule of thirds, but it won't be me.
ben egbert wrote:
Nice capture, looks very sharp and you have good eye contact. Here is what I would do with the background, the foreground seems ok to me but starting with the dark band in the middle I would try to lighten it and then blur it.
I used to have a blur action using PKsharpener that I used for this but it was 32 bit and I lost it when I upgraded to 64 bit. Since I don't do birds anymore I don't need it.
But some around here are good with it. You do need Photoshop I think because its a layer/mask/brush type of job. I don't use LR so I am not sure what it can do.
Somebody will suggest putting the eye at the rule of thirds, but it won't be me....Show more →
Many thanks Ben
I do have photoshop CS 5 just not good at using it. My blurring technique is with the lens so dont know how to do it on PS. Suppose you have to select the bird on a layer? (again something I am pure rubbish at doing properly
I do have photoshop CS 5 just not good at using it. My blurring technique is with the lens so dont know how to do it on PS. Suppose you have to select the bird on a layer? (again something I am pure rubbish at doing properly
How I might approach it.
Make a selection of the bird using magic wand or lasso, refine edge and save as a copy to preserve the sharp bird.
Make another layer below it and above the background (I always like to preserve the background).
Select the new layer and using filters, select lens blur. Make a mask and paint the blur where you want. You can also use this layer to lighten the dark area. Or perhaps make another layer for lightening it.
This is a general description. When I try this I generally get some issues where part of the bird gets included in the blend layer which you don't want.
When you turn the bird layer on, it will be sharp and hopefully wont have any halo.
But Karen (Auntipode) is an expert here. So I am waiting to see what she does or somebody else. I am sort of interested myself.
Make a selection of the bird using magic wand or lasso, refine edge and save as a copy to preserve the sharp bird.
Make another layer below it and above the background (I always like to preserve the background).
Select the new layer and using filters, select lens blur. Make a mask and paint the blur where you want. You can also use this layer to lighten the dark area. Or perhaps make another layer for lightening it.
This is a general description. When I try this I generally get some issues where part of the bird gets included in the blend layer which you don't want.
When you turn the bird layer on, it will be sharp and hopefully wont have any halo.
But Karen (Auntipode) is an expert here. So I am waiting to see what she does or somebody else. I am sort of interested myself.
I took a crude attempt, I did not have any luck with the wand or lasso so I just blurred and adjusted brightness on a layer and painted it in. But it gives and idea what could be done.
Ben, gave you a good explanation of one method and this is the method I used to extract the bird and blur the backround. I used the quick selection tool, refine edge, save to new layer. I then used gaussian blur on the duplicated original layer to about 35 and highlighted the new layer selected matting / defringe, under the layers palette. There is always more than one way to do things in PS and I am sure you will get other suggestions.
I tried Oregon Gals method. I could not get any selection to work on the background without grabbing some bird and not being able to deselect.
But I did a mask in Topaz Remask, to try the other steps. I could not find matting or defringe. Photoshop has about a gazillion menus so its hard to even know where to look.
Ok, thanks, I got the quick select to work this time. I found matting and defringe. But I am still doing something wrong.
I will show the final result and what the mack layer looks like after applying blur. I tried the matting/defringe before and after doing the blur steps.
One quick tip. When blurring a background, in my experience, you almost always get a better result from using lens blur rather that gaussian blur. Gaussian blur can have edge effects that range from barely visible to OUCH!
Another tip. It often helps to add blur in sections with gradual edges (using the refine edge panel). That way closer and more distant portions can be more blurred than areas closer to the plane of focus, simulating better the way bokeh works with a lens.
Oregon Gal wrote:
Ben, I use matting, defringe on the bird layer, not the backround layer. Are you using refine edge after you make your initial selection?
I I did not have a bird layer, But I did use refine edge on the background that excludes the bird and forground. I used matting and defringe on it too.
You can see what my mask looks like above, it was background. Maybe I should start with a mask of the bird instead.
Here is one where I made two selections. One for the bird and one for the background minus bird and foreground. I then blured the non bird version and used a gradient mask to make a gradual transition. Then I used the bird layer to get the sharp bird back.
. My blurring technique is with the lens so dont know how to do it on PS. Suppose you have to select the bird on a layer? (again something I am pure rubbish at doing properly
