Sdentrem wrote in post #18175449
Thanks. I still think I'm a beginner at processing, but I guess I'm maybe intermediate. As Bianchi said, the credit for the sharpness goes to the 500 F4 II, but the credit or the croppability can be shared with the 7D II with those packed pixels on the sensor.
I do 90 pct in Lightroom, and 10 pct in Photoshop. In this case, I start in Lightroom, and did the basic crop, lowered the highlights, and raised the shadows, and raised the overall exposure. I used the Vibrance to raise the colours (50 this time, which is way more than my usual) and I never use the Saturation slider...Vibrance does better and more subtle job in my experience. Added a bit of Clarity. I used the heal spot tool to replace a bit of branch in the lower right hand side with feathers. I also lightened up the birds eye a wee bit, with noise reduction to keep it looking smooth (I do this with most of my bird pics). Then, off to Photoshop to remove that pesky branch sticking up from his left. I use the stamp tool to separate the branch from the body with appropriate background, and either content-aware fill or patch tool to replace the branch with natural looking background. Then, I used the magic wand to select everything but the bird, and ran noise reduction on the background. Then back to Lightroom to finish it: I replaced the darker parts of background with lighter sections using the spot healing tool (Photoshop is probably better at this, but I only decided later to do it) and brushed on the whole background with a combination of low clarity, high noise reduction, and low sharpness...to smooth out any artifacts. I finished with sharpening of about 60 (my usual is 40-50 but this is a big crop and needs a bit more), and a very small amount of vignette (I do it til noticeable, then back down...I prefer to not appear as if I did it).
This was more than my usual. I like to take clean shots to start with and well lit, avoiding most of this. My usual touching up is less than 5 minutes. This took about 15.
I learned much of this from an ebook from a bird photographer from Canada called Glenn Bartley. Very good book for bird photo processing...and he's a professional and uses mainly the 7D II. You can find him on YouTube and on his personal website. Highly recommended books and tutorials...great video blogs on YouTube too.
Hope this is helpful.
SD
Thanks. I still think I'm a beginner at processing, but I guess I'm maybe intermediate. As Bianchi said, the credit for the sharpness goes to the 500 F4 II, but the credit or the croppability can be shared with the 7D II with those packed pixels on the sensor.
I do 90 pct in Lightroom, and 10 pct in Photoshop. In this case, I start in Lightroom, and did the basic crop, lowered the highlights, and raised the shadows, and raised the overall exposure. I used the Vibrance to raise the colours (50 this time, which is way more than my usual) and I never use the Saturation slider...Vibrance does better and more subtle job in my experience. Added a bit of Clarity. I used the heal spot tool to replace a bit of branch in the lower right hand side with feathers. I also lightened up the birds eye a wee bit, with noise reduction to keep it looking smooth (I do this with most of my bird pics). Then, off to Photoshop to remove that pesky branch sticking up from his left. I use the stamp tool to separate the branch from the body with appropriate background, and either content-aware fill or patch tool to replace the branch with natural looking background. Then, I used the magic wand to select everything but the bird, and ran noise reduction on the background. Then back to Lightroom to finish it: I replaced the darker parts of background with lighter sections using the spot healing tool (Photoshop is probably better at this, but I only decided later to do it) and brushed on the whole background with a combination of low clarity, high noise reduction, and low sharpness...to smooth out any artifacts. I finished with sharpening of about 60 (my usual is 40-50 but this is a big crop and needs a bit more), and a very small amount of vignette (I do it til noticeable, then back down...I prefer to not appear as if I did it).
This was more than my usual. I like to take clean shots to start with and well lit, avoiding most of this. My usual touching up is less than 5 minutes. This took about 15.
I learned much of this from an ebook from a bird photographer from Canada called Glenn Bartley. Very good book for bird photo processing...and he's a professional and uses mainly the 7D II. You can find him on YouTube and on his personal website. Highly recommended books and tutorials...great video blogs on YouTube too.
Hope this is helpful.
SD
If you get your hands on a 5DS R and use it with a 500II, you will be amazed at the crop ability.. while maintaining detail... We are talking 50 MP... It will even get better once the next generation 5DS R comes out with the new sensor of the 5DIV & 1DX II ... I am very familiar with Glens wildlife tours.... He always puts up very nice wildlife images..
