Beautiful bird, focus, selection and I love the color of the background with the hawk but it’s hard to imagine such a dark and threatening sky would put so much light on his tail and back. I find matching the lighting on added background and the subject is hard
@jgpittenger Agreed. When replacing backgrounds or inserting an extraction you have several important tasks, two of which are color matching or grading, and illumination matching which can also include light direction. For this image I originally took down the illumination with a couple of curve layers but didn’t like the loss of details in the lighter areas of the hawk so I backed off a bit and this is the result. As in most cases with artwork and edits, everyone is entitled to what they like, and this is what I decided on to post.
