Great Horned Mess

[D Boone]

Anybody think this can be salvaged? I was on my way to take some sunrise shots and found this fellow. He let me get pretty close but it was so dark! I lightened it a bit in picasa already. Every attempt with photoshop dissappointed, especially when I crop it closer. (edit: At first glance thought this was a great horned until my father just corrected me by email! Its a Barred Owl.)

[AFCop]

I don't know what could be done to "save" this. I do kind of like it as is though. The darkness coupled with the red eyes gives it an eerie feel.

[D Boone]

On the full size image, when you crop him close, there is so much definition lost. I guess there is no way to replace whats not there though. I know there are some people in here who can do some incredible work with photoshop.

[CyberDyneSystems]

I feel your pain,..

I was lucky enough to watch a Red tailed Hawk in broad daylight grab a rabbit that was about 25 feet in front of me..

And yes,. I had a camera,. the 20D with 70-300mm DO mounted,.

Three things conspired against me so that as I snapped the panning shots of it flying right across my bow I still managed to get images that were totally unusable.

For the recod,. each image in the brief sequence was framed perfectly with focus point in the right place.. but that could not prevent the following;

1. I had IS switched on,.. and not in panning mode,. this made a jumble of a lot of the image.

2. The bird where it grabbed the rabbit was in full direct sunlight,.. about two feet after it's take off it flew into shadow,. and I did not lift my finger off the shutter far enough to re-meter...

3. I had been shooting ISO 100 just prior,. so my shutter speeds were too low...

Here I was with a golden opportunity,. and actually had the right equipment in hand.

I tried everything I could in PS to get something usable out of this amazing sequence of shots,. but in the end they were unusable :(

[cmM]

heck, make it even darker and just bring out those red eyes :D
I kinda like the shot.

[andygrif]

I guess it depends on your definition of 'saved':)

Here's the results of 30 secs work in PE3...sorry I can't spend longer on it right now....

Auto colour, auto sharpen, red eye removal.

I'm sure someone with a bit more time can get it better

[D Boone]

guess I was hoping for a tightly cropped 11x14! I will keep playing around with it. I wish these guys were out in the daylight like those grey owls up north. Beautiful birds... They don't make a sound when they fly. Thanks for all the responses!

[tupe]

Here's what I got in about 20 minutes with PhotoImpact:

[D Boone]

tupe... thats better than anything I have been able to do. you mind telling me what kinda steps you went through? Thanks, D

[tupe]

tupe... thats better than anything I have been able to do. you mind telling me what kinda steps you went through? Thanks, DSure. I did it all with PhotoImpact.

First I turned the gamma up to about 3.0. Then I darkened the shadows and midtones and turned up the highlights. (Is that "curves" in PS? I don't have PS.)

Then I took the red out with the red-eye tool.

Getting the colors close took most of the time. After the gamma tweak the black had turned dark green, and when I got the browns not-so-green, some of the limbs were purple. I fixed the purple, and then the greys were yellow.

Finally I turned down the saturation and most of the yellow went away.

[Titus213]

Here's a 5 - 10 minute try with PS. I guess it depends on what you want to save it for? I would not hesitate to acknowledge I took it, that's for sure.