Reducing blur from OOF object

I shot this Nuttall's Woodpecker from my window the other day. The pic is worth framing, I think, except for one thing: the head is blurry because of a very OOF branch between the camera and the bird.

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The folks over at www.retouchpro.com are pretty good at this sort of thing.

Thanks, I'll check 'em out.

-js

The retouchpro folks will no doubt do a better job but i fancied a try. I only retouched the bird, not the surroundings, that would take longer.

FlexiPack wrote in post #4919853
The retouchpro folks will no doubt do a better job but i fancied a try. I only retouched the bird, not the surroundings, that would take longer.

Exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. So how did you do it? I'd like to try the same on the big version...

-js

Hi,

Sorry for delay. I used a combination of the clone stamp tool with a fairly soft edge. Also I sampled colours from areas of the bird that wasn't obstructed by the oof branch and painted on a seperate layer with the layers blend mode set to color. I selected a couple of parts of plumage where black met white, copied it to a new layer and freetransformed it to help replace another oof part. If you pm your email add i can send the psd file if you like and you can the different layers and do some more work on it from there if you want to. The red part needs more work and also it looks a little patchy on the large black part of the side of its head.

I kept the PSD in the original large file size you posted

Good idea - it'd be most helpful to see your moves in the PSD file. PM on the way...

-js

I got plenty of guidance and help here and on the RetouchPro site. Gaz (FlexiPack) was kind enough to send me his huge multi-layer PSD file which was most instructive.

Most people took one of two approaches: clone brush/healing brush touchups or selective masking and local contrast/color enhancement.

I decided to try the second approach. My steps:

crop
brighten overall
adjust white balance (on the white feathers at the neck)
select head (freehand with edge seeking, 10 pixel feathering)
adjust contrast with curves layer
select the center of head plus the eye
adjust contrast with curves again
select red feathers on head
increase red in selection
USM 0.5, 300, 0

Result:

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so much better learning to do it yourself!!! Good job! WTG FlexiPack for helping out!

number six wrote in post #4966879
I got plenty of guidance and help here and on the RetouchPro site. Gaz (FlexiPack) was kind enough to send me his huge multi-layer PSD file which was most instructive.

Most people took one of two approaches: clone brush/healing brush touchups or selective masking and local contrast/color enhancement.

I decided to try the second approach. My steps:

crop
brighten overall
adjust white balance (on the white feathers at the neck)
select head (freehand with edge seeking, 10 pixel feathering)
adjust contrast with curves layer
select the center of head plus the eye
adjust contrast with curves again
select red feathers on head
increase red in selection
USM 0.5, 300, 0

Result:

Hosted photo: posted by number six in
./showthread.php?p=496​6879&i=i104751584
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

Full-size image here: http://strappe.smugmug​.com …y/4338426_iDMvR​#254507564

For the print I used USM at 2.0, 90, 5 instead. Looks good!

Thanks again!

-js

Looks great nice work! I never though of trying that method, I think it works very well because it keeps the texture of the feathers. I lost texture when cloning unfortunately.

Gaz