Nearly but not quite!

[Keith]

Is it possible for anyone with a good PP software (which I do not yet own) would be able to sharpen up the left hand flying duck, the photo is fairly heavily cropped already, but I think I have gone as far as I can to push it in the basic software I have.
I think this could have been a fairly good effort otherwise.

[Colin Southern]

Is it possible for anyone with a good PP software (which I do not yet own) would be able to sharpen up the left hand flying duck, the photo is fairly heavily cropped already, but I think I have gone as far as I can to push it in the basic software I have.
I think this could have been a fairly good effort otherwise.

Ask and ye shall receive

[Colin Southern]

Ask and ye shall receive

Just for the record, was easy to do in Photoshop ...

- I dragged the image to the new layer icon to create a duplicate layer

- Applied an unsharp mask to the top layer to get the left-hand bird looking good

- Used the eraser to erase everything on the top layer except the bird that's required (done with the bottom layer switched off so I can see what I'm doing)

- Flatten, save etc -> "job done"

[crisscross]

PS

seems little known, but command+J gets a new layer in I think all PS PSE versions

won't stoop to setting the stopwatch to see how much quicker to do in NX2

Keith: I think this is a type of shot that is almost impossible to shoot straight and one where I would use PS(E) to move the birds around a touch and remove branches spoiling composition. We had a similar excercise ages ago with Mark's Kingfisher silhouetted sitting on a branch
Kingfisher Silhouette (hey doesn't the search engine work well!)

[Colin Southern]

seems little known, but command+J gets a new layer in I think all PS PSE versions

There are about a gazillion keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop - honestly, I wish I could remember even 1/2 of them! (heck, I'd settle for remembering even 10 of them!).

won't stoop to setting the stopwatch to see how much quicker to do in NX2

I reckon I could get it down to under 10 sec in Photoshop just by wiping the sharpen tool over the offending bird

[Keith]

Thanks Colin, I can see I have a massive learning curve coming up re PP software.
I can't seem to make my mind up in which direction to go regarding which one to buy.

I have downloaded the Corel PSP X2 Ultimate for a trial but obviously it would take me a while to learn its capabiltities, the basic adjustments seem very easy to master but I am avoiding the more comprehensive stuff it contains at the moment.

Is there anything to choose between Corel and Adobe apart from price?

When you explain how you did sharpen the left hand duck, at the moment I am just totally lost in PP jargon, I can feel an evening class coming on.

I quite like the silhouetted branches personally, which ones would you remove Chris? These trees and the ducks were a good 300-400 yards away and the the AF picked them up very quickly which is making me more and more impressed with the Sigma lens, thanks for all your input, I really am enjoying posting on here as the I am getting some really good feedback from you all.

[Colin Southern]

Thanks Colin, I can see I have a massive learning curve coming up re PP software.
I can't seem to make my mind up in which direction to go regarding which one to buy.

No worries

Regarding which PP package to go for, it's a tough call - at the end of the day, Photoshop has BY FAR the most momentum (and probably fair to say, capabilities) (or potential capabilities). And probably more books written about it than any other application.

It's capabilities are 2nd to none, but it's expensive - and using it effectively requires an investment in both time and additional books (which mostly deal with just PORTIONS of the program) - but that investment returns great rewards.

At the end of the day, it's a judgement call - if you do run with a package like that then it's very easy for people like me to help you with things - if you go for one of the other packages than that package will probably also be able to do all that you require, but getting help may be more difficult (I for one won't be able to help).

Plan C might be to see if you can pickup an older version of Photoshop (say, CS2) a bit cheaper? (so long as it's legal).

[crisscross]

I quite like the silhouetted branches personally, which ones would you remove Chris?

you can go on fiddling for ever, but here is a suggestion. As the background is virtually pure monochrome, I have just painted out enough to give the birdies some flight space and a bit of the OF twiggery bottom right. It looks as if you have done some unsharp already (maybe setting the camera sharpening to high as opposed to medium high?), so I have cleaned up edges of LH duck again by painting out the fuzz & halo.



As far as PP software choice is concerned you can either (a) take the long-term sure option and lash out for CS with advantages enumerated by Colin (b) take into account that photography is a hobby one aims to enjoy, including PP, hence my choice of NX2 for 98% of the work and PSE for the other 2%. I never got the least enjoyment from learning or using PSE....in fact there is an extra 1% where I still use Color-it, a mac app that is so old it has grown whiskers, but still just so easy being able to do adjustments including re-scale on a selection without worrying which layer its on and text ditto.

NB you never get upgrades for PSE nor a rebate when getting CS, so if you are going that way, go direct.

[Keith]

You took out pretty much as I expected you would Chris, I can see why, I still like the origonal, wondering if they made it through or not.

I kow you mentioned Capture NX before, and I will still keep playing around with it till the trial runs out, you obviously believe it is comprehensive enough to do most of your stuff on it, not being up to speed with PP I am probably not going to get the chance to realise its full potential before the trial period ends.

[Wirefox]

Just for the record, was easy to do in Photoshop ...

- I dragged the image to the new layer icon to create a duplicate layer

- Applied an unsharp mask to the top layer to get the left-hand bird looking good

- Used the eraser to erase everything on the top layer except the bird that's required (done with the bottom layer switched off so I can see what I'm doing)

- Flatten, save etc -> "job done"

Nice tip. You do realise I will neglect my family by trawling through a backlog of images that have slightly out of sharp components.

Very nice image Crusty.

[Colin Southern]

Nice tip.

Thanks

You can use varients of it for a whole host of things (like spot colour etc)