Tis the new year for the camera clubs. I really enjoyed participating last year and learned SO much from the monthly competitions. I was put into the beginner's category since I was new and certainly didn't think I belonged in any other category. I won enough points that I'll be moved up to the next level this year. Points won't be so easy to come by now!!! Not that they were last year, but I got way more than I ever thought I would, that's for sure.
Anyway, on to this year. There's also another camera club on the other side of the peninsula that has a lot more activity and, most important, lots of special interest groups. Many of the SIGs meet during the week in the mornings, which makes me think there are a lot of retired members, but it looks like it's worth checking out anyway. Their monthly competitions include the occasional print requirement, which completely intimidates me, but is probably a good thing so that intimidation factor could be overcome. And their very first competition of the new year is print, wouldn't you know. They also have 4 different categories each month into which you can enter up to 2 photos, different categories. The nature category for Sept is birds in flight. I've been debating whether or not to enter for the first competition at all, and further debating whether to enter the BIF category if I do.
I've posted a few BIF's and gotten some excellent help, but the bottom line is, you simply have to start out with a good shot. But you don't need me to tell you that. Searching thru all my bif shots, this one seems to be one of the best from the beginning, getting it mostly correct in camera. The eye was as clear as I've captured an eye, and the feathers had decent definition.
Frank Hymus will not be impressed to know that I've spent some hours on this one, mostly in making the selection around the bird (ugh!!!) and then trying out different ways to blur the background and yet not have that tell tale sign of the edges being over-sharpened. One of the other issues I had was with the cropping. I constrained the crop to the original ratio, and in order to keep his eye in the rule of thirds range while still cropping in closer to him, I had to cut some of his reflection out.
@frankhymus Trying again! This one is actually a contender. FYI, I just popped back in to LR and ran this thru the Auto Tone, and LR increased the exposure by .35, which I do think looks a little better. One thing I don't like is that, here on 365 there's a lot of pixel detail around the bird that is not present in LR or PS. Not sure why that is, and definitely wondering how that would play out in print.
I think I may have ditched the rule of thirds in order to keep the reflections in this case - never met a rule that wasn't met to be broken at some point or other!
But, that's just my opinion and I really do not know much!
Great shot, BTW
I agree with Wendy, the reflection of this grace in motion would have been a stronger secondary focal point to this image. I can only imagine the headaches that you went thru trying to catch this one in motion, The grass and brown tones do not really add to the overall composition.
I appreciate your willingness to embrace critiques. I also would appreciate any comments and suggestions you could make on my images.
Rather than trying to make a detailed selection, it can sometimes be simpler to make the change globally on a duplicated layer (of the background or the work so far, and then mask out what you don't want to correct, or the other way around, create a black filled mask (ALT Create Mask button) and then mask IN the area you want with a white brush. This often works best if you only want the changes on a small prt of the frame. The mask doesn't have to be totally exactl most of the time, you can "feather the mask" (on the mask properties tab) or simply blur the mask with the Gaussian Blur filter and choose a suitable amount..
And echoing what several others have already said, I find cropping of the reflection a tad awkward.
Oh, and some other suggestions about making selections, especially if you were making it on the white of the bird. Since there is so much contrast in color, a "Color Selection" would work easily to start with I think. . Selection | Color Range... and use the + eyedropper to click on the colors. Usually best to have the "local color cluster" box checked, and experiment with the level of "fuzziness" you like. You can have this selection applied to the pixels, or to the mask, depending on which is active when you choose the menu item.
@frankhymus Wow! The color selector would have certainly saved some heartache!! I have a feeling that's a familiar concept - one that totally escaped me in my time of need!
@frankhymus And PLEASE educate me on saving to the correct color space straight out of PS! That almost never works for me! You can see the color difference in the 2 photos. This one went back to LR before being exported as a jpeg. The alternate could not be sent back to LR since I didn't open it from there. (I was accessing the file that had my PS layers in it.) So I had to save as a jpeg from within PS. Cannot seem to figure out the combination that saves the color space correctly.
As I said, i would have preferred to see more reflection.
There are so many selection tools and modes that can make life much easier than simply the selection tools from the main tool bar. It might pay you to explore the "selection" menu item
@shesnapped Color space? I always stick with sRGB. Except where I am specifically planning to have prints made, and even then check out what color spaces the printer will support. For internet viewing, you can't go wrong with sRGB. Particularly here at 365, at least the last time I checked, only sRGB is rendered "correctly." 16 bit is best as you are editing, even though the final jpeg will only produce 8 bit.
LR can set/reset the color space below the main picture. I don't know if there another "color configuration" option setting since I don't use LR at all. Camera Raw has all the develop features, sometimes even before LR, and I use the general Bridge" for cataloging. In PS, hou can set the color space defaults in Edit | Color Settings... and choose sRGB61966-2.1 for RGB Working Space (it's the only sRGB one there actually). And under Color Management Policies, you might want to think about checking Convert to working Color Space for RGB, just to make everything consistent.
Some folks might say I am missing the "richer, fuller" color spaces of Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, but since your monitor will almost assuredly not show these correctly anyway (or at least fully) - I actually don't know of any monitor that can do better than "full" sRGB - why bother? Invest in hardware color adjustment for your monitor, it's not expensive - if you want to do the best with sRGB, and invest in a monitor advertized as 15 million colors or "full sRGB" support.
@frankhymus There's something about how to save a jpeg from PS that makes it sRGB, which is what I want when I'm exporting for Internet, right? When you save from PS, it asks you whether you want to embed ProPhoto something or other, and you either check or uncheck the box. I've saved the alternate shot both ways, and neither way has produced the correct color.
LR has ProPhoto RGB as its default work space. If you have something different in PS, you must set the LR Preferences External Editing | Edit in PS. Set the Color Space to what you have in PS. sRGB if that is what you have set. Also, choose to send it over as a PSD, not a TIFF, the files will be a lot smaller.
Also, if you have imported from LR and "save" you'll save back in Lightroom, so if you want to keep it as a file in the PS only realm, do a Save As...
This is what Scott kelby recommends in his Lightroom for Digital Photographers, Cahpter 9, Jumping to Photoshop.
I am the first to admit that even though Adobe advertise that LR and PS "work transparently," I don't believe they do, and worse, Adobe just does not want to integrate them transparently better.
You should still be able to operate in PS only, setting the profile you want in Edit | Color settings, and make sure you choose "Convert to Working RGB" in the Color Management Polices, but if you ever try to send such things back to LR, like with a "Save" rather than a "Save As..." any mismatch in color space settings in PS and the Preferences | External Editing | Photoshop settings will bite you.
Oh I am glad I have never become a slave to LR and its Library Module.
@frankhymus I'm so confused. I don't have any problems when PS saves back to LR. That works fine. It's when I save a jpeg from PS to my hard drive that the colors change. And they definitely change. They are not what I was seeing on my screen at the time I saved them. My Color Management is set to Convert to Working RGB, and my Working Space RGB is set to sRGB. When I'm working in PS from a file that I pulled off my hard drive, NOT exporting from LR into PS, (e.g. I saved the egret photo here in its layers tiff form before exporting back to LR so I could rework it later.) When I went into PS and opened the layers tiff file - no LR involved at all - I did all the work in PS and needed to save as a jpeg straight from PS. In the Save As dialogue, the only thing in that dialogue relating to color space is a check box to "Embed Color Profile: ProPhoto RGB". When I check the box to embed it, the photo looks fine on my computer, but as soon as I put it anywhere else (phone, 365, etc) the colors are completely different. If I do not check the Embed box, the colors again are completely different. The output of both photos to anywhere except my computer are identical. ON my computer they are different, one is correct, the other is wrong. But again, this only happens when LR is NOT involved.
Sorry, I have never seen that checkbox. The original tiff though, it was produced in LR converting the original raw, right? It must have something to do with that, but never using LR I really can't help any more. Sorry. Like I said, Adobe don't make the LR and PS interactions easy.
@frankhymus I figured out how to work around all this. Even tho my color spaces and everything I can find is set to sRGB, when my PS saves, it saves to ProPhoto RGB. If I reopen that tif file straight from PS, I have to go to Edit/Convert to Profile and convert it to sRGB to make the final jpeg save come out as sRGB. Not sure why there's not a setting for the tif to save as sRGB, especially since all my color profiles and color management are set that way, but this seems to be the issue, and I've found a work-around. UGH! That brought a little frustration on! Thanks for your help!!!!
September 12th, 2016
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But, that's just my opinion and I really do not know much!
Great shot, BTW
I appreciate your willingness to embrace critiques. I also would appreciate any comments and suggestions you could make on my images.
And echoing what several others have already said, I find cropping of the reflection a tad awkward.
What are your thoughts on the alternate crop?
There are so many selection tools and modes that can make life much easier than simply the selection tools from the main tool bar. It might pay you to explore the "selection" menu item
LR can set/reset the color space below the main picture. I don't know if there another "color configuration" option setting since I don't use LR at all. Camera Raw has all the develop features, sometimes even before LR, and I use the general Bridge" for cataloging. In PS, hou can set the color space defaults in Edit | Color Settings... and choose sRGB61966-2.1 for RGB Working Space (it's the only sRGB one there actually). And under Color Management Policies, you might want to think about checking Convert to working Color Space for RGB, just to make everything consistent.
Some folks might say I am missing the "richer, fuller" color spaces of Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, but since your monitor will almost assuredly not show these correctly anyway (or at least fully) - I actually don't know of any monitor that can do better than "full" sRGB - why bother? Invest in hardware color adjustment for your monitor, it's not expensive - if you want to do the best with sRGB, and invest in a monitor advertized as 15 million colors or "full sRGB" support.
Also, if you have imported from LR and "save" you'll save back in Lightroom, so if you want to keep it as a file in the PS only realm, do a Save As...
This is what Scott kelby recommends in his Lightroom for Digital Photographers, Cahpter 9, Jumping to Photoshop.
I am the first to admit that even though Adobe advertise that LR and PS "work transparently," I don't believe they do, and worse, Adobe just does not want to integrate them transparently better.
Oh I am glad I have never become a slave to LR and its Library Module.