2207_2356 Fast Food Options
An American Robin has foraged in my backyard for nutritious protein for the little ones, and now is standing on the fence ready to depart. Just one of countless trips.
Robins aren't difficult to photograph, but here I was shooting between the overhanging branches of a Manitoba Maple that grows on my neighbour Adam's side of the fence. Adam has offered to cut the branches, but I like them, and so do the birds. However, in this case an out of focus branch was bisecting the lower part of this robin; you can see traces of it at the lower left. Clearly some processing was needed.
Removing the branch digitally wasn't an option, so I did a fairly tight crop on the head, then upscaled the image using ON1 Resize. After that I ran it through Topaz DeNoise for some moderate noise removal. Finally I used Photoshop's Dodge Tool to lighten the eye a touch, and saved the 300 ppi version as an uncompressed TIFF file. Then I changed the colour space from Adobe RGB (1998) - which is best for printing, and the one preferred by most publishers - to sRGB, the universal colour space for sharing online, and finally reduced the resolution to 72 ppi, which is all that the average monitor can read, and sharpened that version using the Photoshop Unsharp Mask. For this I used Luminosity Sharpening, which is yet another step in the workflow, but I like the result as it reduces the halo effect around contrasty subject lines that is a clear sign of over-sharpening.
I can imagine the yawns of boredom now, folks begging me to shut up or just shoot them. Sorry. I generally fly through these steps in a few minutes. Taking care with the processing allows me to provide a high quality, publishable image to a client on demand. It's a huge step up from the days of slides in plastic boxes.
Photographed in Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2022 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
2207_2356 Fast Food Options
An American Robin has foraged in my backyard for nutritious protein for the little ones, and now is standing on the fence ready to depart. Just one of countless trips.
Robins aren't difficult to photograph, but here I was shooting between the overhanging branches of a Manitoba Maple that grows on my neighbour Adam's side of the fence. Adam has offered to cut the branches, but I like them, and so do the birds. However, in this case an out of focus branch was bisecting the lower part of this robin; you can see traces of it at the lower left. Clearly some processing was needed.
Removing the branch digitally wasn't an option, so I did a fairly tight crop on the head, then upscaled the image using ON1 Resize. After that I ran it through Topaz DeNoise for some moderate noise removal. Finally I used Photoshop's Dodge Tool to lighten the eye a touch, and saved the 300 ppi version as an uncompressed TIFF file. Then I changed the colour space from Adobe RGB (1998) - which is best for printing, and the one preferred by most publishers - to sRGB, the universal colour space for sharing online, and finally reduced the resolution to 72 ppi, which is all that the average monitor can read, and sharpened that version using the Photoshop Unsharp Mask. For this I used Luminosity Sharpening, which is yet another step in the workflow, but I like the result as it reduces the halo effect around contrasty subject lines that is a clear sign of over-sharpening.
I can imagine the yawns of boredom now, folks begging me to shut up or just shoot them. Sorry. I generally fly through these steps in a few minutes. Taking care with the processing allows me to provide a high quality, publishable image to a client on demand. It's a huge step up from the days of slides in plastic boxes.
Photographed in Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2022 James R. Page - all rights reserved.