Best in the lat two years

Keep it up... you have some nice captures!

Thanks to all for your nice comments, for sure my post editing skills are somewhat limited.
Anthony, the first shot is a Lesser Black-Backed Gull the 5th you already ID so if you mean the 6th shot it is a European Bee Eater and the 7th shot is a Grey Francolin.
Cyber, Monitor Calibration I guess I have to stay with what I have at the moment. for myself understanding colour profiles etc. I find difficult. I take your point about background noise this becomes more apparent when I applied shapening, if I try to use noise reduction that it removes the sharpness of the bird. Are you suggesting I need to edit the background and subject seperately?
here in Arabia we mostly have strong sunshine. If your up for it I would be pleased to e-mail you an original Raw file and see how my shot can be better edited.
Thanks again to all

OK heres an attempt to remove noise and colour/contrast adjustment. This post editing is a big learning curve

Very nice series of pics. Your edit of the kingfisher looks much better with the noise. I can't tell if it is oversaturated or not, have not seen the color ones myself before.

I know what you mean about a learning curve for PP, I am still getting used to doing it myself and have lots to learn.

Hi John W, yes I agree with you, its just that others had posted here stating about the noise plus lack of colour etc, so I did the re-edit to prove a point

luckyart60 wrote in post #2032945
Thanks to all for your nice comments, for sure my post editing skills are somewhat limited.
if I try to use noise reduction that it removes the sharpness of the bird. Are you suggesting I need to edit the background and subject seperately?
here in Arabia we mostly have strong sunshine. If your up for it I would be pleased to e-mail you an original Raw file and see how my shot can be better edited.
Thanks again to all

This is what I do whenever the background becomes unavoidable with noise. The NR on the bird dramatically affects the detail on the bird and can spoil it as you know. I lasso the bird very carefully and inverse the selection, feather it by 1 pixel and modify it with 'expand' 1 pixel and inverse the selection and then use NR to reduce the noise of the background.
If the bird has feathers stretched out from it's body making it difficult to lasso then I use the edit in quick mask mode, zoom in and carefully around the bird then when completed knock of the mask until the selection around the bird is visible then simply inverse to use the background.

I'm off to the states and Canada and finally down to Florida first thing in the morning for a couple of weeks so I won't be around for a while so I have done a quick edit for you using the mask tool to separate the bird. Reduced the noise of the background and nothing else.

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