How would you process this eagle?

I'm curious how you would approach the processing of this image. If you are so inclined, and don't have anything else to do, take a copy of this original SOOC, and then tell everybody how and why you processed it the way you did. I'd love to see the opinion of others and learn something new.

http://stoph.smugmug.c​om …k2w#1203035329_​bK7qa-O-LB

"How would you process this eagle" It would be a shame, but first you would want to pluck it, cut the legs off at the knees and the neck off as close to the back as possible. Pre heat oven to 350, oh wait, were you asking about the image?
Start with a tighter crop.

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peregrineflier wrote in post #11938482
"How would you process this eagle" It would be a shame, but first you would want to pluck it, cut the legs off at the knees and the neck off as close to the back as possible. Pre heat oven to 350, oh wait, were you asking about the image?
Start with a tighter crop.

LOL

Here is my rework. Chris the whites on the head were blown out bad, tried to bring them back kinda did but also kinda tainted the white. A weak noise reduction (Noiseware) , yellow saturation to get some yellow on the beak. Contrast bump , One round of unsharp mask. amount.... 85%,...radius.. 1.0,... threshold.... 4. And a crop to bring it in a bit. Do you shoot Raw? Probably could have better processing result if it were. I by no means am a processing whiz ,I am sure there are far better processors here that can assist. As many Eagle shots as we get out there I would have deleted it. Not enough detail for my liking that far away .

LOL Tom first thought that went through my head as well.

i'll get back to you on the processing

-Z

peregrineflier wrote in post #11938482
"How would you process this eagle" It would be a shame, but first you would want to pluck it, cut the legs off at the knees and the neck off as close to the back as possible. Pre heat oven to 350, oh wait, were you asking about the image?
Start with a tighter crop.

That was totally funny ... Good quick wit there .......

Ok, I was board. I dont do much post processing or work with jpgs or attach images so i hope this all works. I am in an odd mood today so i decided to desaturate a few things and, well, i like it. (ducks to avoid thrown vegetables )

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Nice shot, here is my feeble attempt.

Opened your original in COP 6.01.1 adjusted exposure, contrast, brightness saturation, levels, highlight recovery (for blown whites) and cropped tighter. Saturated the color in the beak a bit more separately. Processed these new settings as another jpg onto my disk, opened in CS5 for a bit of noise reduction and sharpenening, saved and uploaded then posted.

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png' | Redirected to error image by ZENFOLIO PROTECTED

I truly do not know what I'm dong, but gave it a try for the fun of it.
Adjustment layer: color curves to decrease midtown contrast and highlights
Adjustment layer: midtown contrast increase and darken highlights to head
Merge and overall sharpen

drama, how did you process this?

Color corrected, darkened using a multiply layer ( 20 %)
Selectively sharpened, resized, sharpened again, NR using Neat image