Australian Cockatoo

[Soozie B]

This little beauty was captured in Echuca NSW. I just loved the whiteness of his feathers and the pink around his eyes and beak.

C&C just welcome as always


Australian Cockatoo by Soozie_Lou_B, on Flickr

[Geoff F]

An interesting bird, Soozie, but for me it is lost in that overall scene; particularly the bright area on the right.

I would try a tighter crop, possibly something around 4 x 5 portrait ratio.

[Dave Humphries]

HI Soozie,

I tend to agree with Geoff, you could crop almost 50% off the right hand side, in fact take it down the middle of the trunk and that places the bird on the right third, looking across to the left (and now into the frame).

You might still want to reduce the brightness of the sky in lower left corner though.

I do like the bird for the reasons you say.

[Soozie B]

Thanks Dave and Geoff

I have had a go at cropping it into a more appealing position as well as darkening the left side a bit more.

I now have a weird mark on the to left corner (sort of like a ghost mark) and an outline around the birds head. Did I do something wrong with my layers? I added a transparent layer, used the burn brush three times on the left side with opacity of 10%, then merged layers and resized.


Cocky by Soozie_Lou_B, on Flickr

[Geoff F]

With regard to the top left corner, you may need to go over the area again with the brush at a different setting. It isn't too bad though.

Personally, I never use any of the burn tools etc. The way I tackle this sort of problem is with a Curves Adjustment Layer. Set that to reduce the brightest area to something suitable. Add an inverted mask (Hide All) then carefully paint over the problem with a soft edged 'white' brush at fairly low opacity making several passes until a sufficient amount of the masked area has been revealed and looks correct; all nicely merged together.

But this assumes you have suitable software and a bit of practice with 'painting in the effects'.

I think there was probably a slight 'halo' problem around the edges of the bird originally. Working and enlarging the bird has exaggerated the problem slightly. A common problem with certain light angles. Particularly with a soft edged 'rounded surface' like a bird.

The tree edge below the bird is also slightly affected. The only thing you can do is to be careful over sharpening the image so you don't make it worse.

I sometimes find that doing any sharpening on a duplicate layer with the blend mode set to Luminosity reduces the problem. Otherwise try using a little more Threshold with Unsharp Mask and see if that is any better.

I never use any of the camera auto 'enhancement' settings like auto sharpening so I can try to control any difficulties like this.

But, like I say, a common problem with some light angles. And a white bird is probably making it look worse.

[Ken Curtis]

Soozie, the crop is much better. It might be even better if the cockatoo were not so close to the top of the photo. I suspect you may have wanted to not show the bright area, devoid of leaves, above the bird's head in the original image. Cloning leaves into that area might work followed by a different cropping.

[Bobobird]

Edit is much better and agree with Geoff and Ken - the top needs more space, the bottom less so.

[Soozie B]

Thanks gents for the feedback and advice. I am totally loving learning the new skills and am gaining confidence in my ability.