Kingfisher Shot

[squishy]

USM - unsharp mask.

i really don't know how it works, but with some fiddling it makes lines much more defined then just sharpening

[Ed Tyler]

Unsharp Mask increases the contrast on either side of a line where two different colours meet. (Basically)

Sometimes when pictures are oversharpened you can see halos around the lines.

Beware though, the use of unsharp mask can make noise in your photo show up more. With a bit of practise you can achieve some good results.

I found that USM made a big difference to how my final images look, and for the better

Ed

[cutecoot]

If you are new to photo editing, scaly, try downloading free Google Picasa software .. it only has a few simple editing functions, but ones you are probably most likely to need .. it has a simple feature on it for lightening or darkening, and desaturating (if the lightening/darkening feature ends up making the colours look too bright overall). Its a great stepping stone to the more complicated photo editing suites (having said that, I've stuck with my Picasa I like it that much!)

[cutecoot]

Result of tuning (Fill light/shadows) function used in Picasa:



Unfortunately can't find anything on there to reduce noise though .


Hmm .. that looks a bit bright now! I find every time I look at my screen photos look a different shade. I must learn to keep my laptop at the same angle!)

[squishy]

picasa is a good piece of software for skimming through photos (and i also use it to quickly edit to make sure i know what i'm going to do in more detail later) but it functions as photo manipulation software are quite limited. it does have a few nifty features i like though.

i find that for my main editing GIMP (a free piece of software you can download) does far more and is really helping me learn. (if you want it, jusy google: GIMP 2 or something like that).

I find that the most effective way to remove noise is to first do your colour and contrast editing and sharpening (with whatever method you like) then create a duplicate layer of your image on top of it, gaussian blur that layer until the noise is gone from the background, then VERY carefully lasso around the subject and anything else that should be in focus, invert the selection and create a layer mask to that selection, which then shows the sharp subject from the other layer and the blurred background from the duplicate layer. if you are careful with your blurring and lassoing, you can make it so the join between the 2 layers is invisible. (after doing that you should then merge the visible layers so that you can save your image as a JPG )

hope that helps

[scaly_piscine]

All that sounds a bit beyond my ability and I don't have time to learn how to do all those steps at present (got lots of tournaments coming up which I'm studying for).

Anyway here's my latest best of the bunch kingfisher photo. Might be my favourite so far I think. Not done anything other the photo other than basic adjustments. Feel free everyone to suggest improvements.

[cutecoot]

Another great capture, s_c You could probably get away with cropping off some of the tangled branches on the left, as they make the photo too busy and take your eye away from the bird slightly .. and maybe just brightened up a smidge? Do try Picasa out if you get a chance (between tournaments!) .. it really is a doddle to use!

[Nico Steenberg]

This is the best version IMO i will just add a bit of space up front to get the composition right. There's a lot of good Editing programs available and since i went over to Photoshop CS 3 i really could see the difference in image quality. Yes its expensive but worth it.

Originally Posted by glsammy

Here's my quick adjustment.



Always a problems working with such a small image, working form your original image would achieve much better results.
What I did was a boost in contrast and saturation, plus remove some background noise with neat image.