Raw conversion challenge

[tommykjensen]

Lets try another one.

Show me what You get get out og this raw image. Cropping, level, exposure etc.
What I would like to see is nice sky and some details on the hawk.

For PS CS2 users please also tell me the steps to get to the produced result.

Download raw image here. (http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/public/challenge/IMG_6153.CR2)

http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/public/challenge/IMG_6153.jpg

[chap]

Tommy,

Here's what I came up with. I'm using CS2, so I'll try to explain what I did.

First I started out with two different conversions using ACR, one for the sky and one for the bird. They're both pretty extreme and there are probably better settings, but I didn't play around with them too much:

For the bird:
Exposure: +1.20
Shadows: 5
Brightness: 50
Contrast: -50
Saturation: 0

For the sky:
Exposure: +0.80
Shadows: 100
Brightness: 50
Contrast: +100
Saturation: +11

I copied both of these into one document in photoshop with the sky conversion as the background and the bird as a layer on top. I copied the sky layer and used threshold to come up with a rough layer mask for the bird layer. I cleaned up the edges of this using a 3px soft brush on the layer mask. I sharpened the bird layer using Smart Sharpen set at 90% with a 0.8 radius.

To take care of the CA around the edges of the bird, I copied the bird layer and used hue/saturation to desaturate the blues and magentas until the CA wasn't really noticeable. I hid this layer, duped the bird again and used the find edges and gaussian blur filters to make a layer mask for the desaturated layer. Again, I cleaned up this mask with a 3px soft brush.

The result isn't perfect, the edges could definitely use more work, but this is what I was able to do in 15 or 20 minutes of tinkering.

[Edit]
I forgot to mention this, though it's pretty obvious: I cropped the shot to make the bird more prominent.

That's a great capture of a bird in flight. Makes me think I should go get that 85mm. :-)

chap

[Angel_LCD]

Well my first try :) Using PS CS2

1. Imported the RAW image with Flourescent white balance
2. Cropped in on the bird.
3. Used the clone tool to take away the strap
4. Used the magic wand to select the bird and adjusted the RGB levels values : 0 - 1.00 - 255

this is the first time I've done something like this so please comment :)

[CyberPet]

I got a bit carried away here... sorry.

http://the-halls.se/edited/coolbird.jpg

I made two exposures really, one for the bird, to bring out details, and one for the sky. Then I realized that the bird would look much cooler if I moved it... so I made a selection and moved it to the top left corner and also rotated it a bit, as if it was in flight instead of on the way down.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Petra that is amazing! Excellent job fixing color and recovering lost detail.
Your artistic license pays off too :)

Angel.. you may be looking at a monitor calibration problem? it's very very blue... and details are lost due to it's overall darkeness. Though on the whole this was a good first try.

Cahp.. your colors are spot on as well.. very nice. I think the image begs for a different crop though. :)

[lostdoggy]

After seeing Cyberpet's and chap's work I wouldn't even want to try. Wow defeat before stepping into the ring.

[pcasciola]

I did this on an LCD, so I'll have to check my work in the AM on my CRT at the office.

http://www.casciola.com/pics/cs.jpg

[CyberDyneSystems]

... yeah.. I don't think I'll give this one a try after all.. I wouldn't want to make you all look bad... :rolleyes: :lol: :lol:

That's really really really really good Phil!

[Homer]

Phil, Thats a very remarkable recovery. I bow to your photoshop abilities!!

[Big_B]

I never cease to be amased by what can be done in photoshop. Fantastic work all, I'm not even going to try this one!

[Big_B]

... yeah.. I don't think I'll give this one a try after all.. I wouldn't want to make you all look bad... :rolleyes: :lol: :lol:


Yeah, cos that's the real reason! :lol: :lol:

[lostdoggy]

This forum needs new ranking Like PS Masters!!!

[witchy]

Phil, Thats a very remarkable recovery. I bow to your photoshop abilities!!

I'll second that!

Phil, could you tell us what you did?

[Nikolas]

My effort.
http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/%7Esmeegles/Stuff/bird.jpg
(http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/%7Esmeegles/Stuff/bird.jpg)

[tommykjensen]

Great efforts everybody. Its really great to see what skilled photoshoppers can get out of a rather poor raw capture. (Hawk almost out of frame, not very sharp etc.)

Chap, looks great. Though I had a different crop in mind.
Angel, as CDS mention it looks a bit too blue on my screen too. Otherwise great frist time attempt.
Petra, looks great and very creative rotating the hawk. It works when You don't know the full story so for me its not what I would do but great work.
Nikolas, also great work but the same comment about rotating.

Phil, what can I say. That is really great. I think Yours is the best so far.

[chap]

Thanks for the comments on my first attempt.

Phil, yours is really great, what sort of sharpening did you do to get that much detail out of the feathers?

Here's my second attempt. I cleaned up the layer masks, lightened some of the feathers, and added some high pass sharpening. Hopefully the crop on this one is better too. :-)

[pcasciola]

Phil, yours is really great, what sort of sharpening did you do to get that much detail out of the feathers?
I started out with the standard 300/0.3/0 with unsharp mask, and I might have slightly tweaked it from there, but because raising the exposure +2 in ACR caused a bunch of noise, I ran it through noise ninja with no sharpening. This is not my typical workflow, as I usually apply unsharp mask in Noise Ninja which seems to work best.

I am really not good with layer masks at all, and going +2 on the exposure virtually eliminated the sky, so I just put the sky layer behind, selected all the white areas in the first exposure and deleted them so the sky would show through.

Chap, the transitition between your layers looks much cleaner than what I did. Can you tell me how you did the layer masks?

[pcasciola]

BTW, thanks for the feedback everyone. Just about every technique I used was learned right here on P.O.T.N., so I guess I just spend way too much time on the forums (I think my boss will attest to that). :lol:

[chap]

Phil,

My layer stack has the sky layer as the background and the bird on top. To do the layer mask I started out by duplicating the sky layer, which has the bird nearly black to begin with, and using the threshold command to roughly make the bird black and the sky white. I copied this into the layer mask for the bird layer and deleted the temporary layer. Then I zoomed in to 200% or 300% and used the paintbrush tool with a small soft brush to clean the edges. A graphics tablet is really a necessity for this sort of thing (I use the cheapest Wacom model). One of the things I learned recently that really speeds up the process is that the [ and ] keys will bump the brush size smaller and larger by a small amount. You get the best results by taking it slow and working on one piece at a time. I completely redid the masks for the second version I posted because with the closer crop the original ones really looked bad. I'd guess it took about 20 minutes or so to get the mask just right.

chap

[GyRob]

Just seen this and wow to some the covertions they look great.
Rob.