some recent stuff

[Dae]

I think they're a superb set of images, the quality is really very good. I too thought the image of the Robin was a bit dark and I too couldn't help but having a go at it.

I used photoshop to do this one, sharpened the bird up, brought out the shadows some, saturated the colours a bit, brightened some, and cloned out the branch in the background.

[cosmicma]

cheers for the replies and critique everyone it's all appreciated

now the then the robin...

the day the robin was photographed was a dull miserable day and the light wasn't at it's best at all but i liked the pose and thought it was worth a shot
i was i bit peeved about the branch but i knew that i could clone it out some time in the future and i have to say youv'e both done a wonderfull job at doing just that

if i had to choose out of the two that have been improved i would choose glsammy's and i will try to explain why

there both very good and quite an improvement of the original post and considering you only had a 800 x 600 image to work with i'm impressed with what you both achieved

glsammy's retouch looks a little more natural to me and has managed to brighten the image up without blowing the highlights and has brought out the darker detail
i don't know if sharpening has been added the image was quite sharp to begin with so in my view didn't really need sharpening any more
saturation looks untouched or a very little amount of tweeking i'm not sure
all in all it's good

dae tweeking is also very good but i prefer slightly less saturation and sharpening but saying that i think it's down to taste
trying to keep feathers looking soft but still sharp is not an easy task in my experience
i do like the contrast of the photo everything stands out putting the robin definitly in the foreground

thanks to both of you for taking the time and effort to show what can be achieved

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by cosmicma

cheers for the replies and critique everyone it's all appreciated

now the then the robin...

the day the robin was photographed was a dull miserable day and the light wasn't at it's best at all but i liked the pose and thought it was worth a shot
i was i bit peeved about the branch but i knew that i could clone it out some time in the future and i have to say youv'e both done a wonderfull job at doing just that

if i had to choose out of the two that have been improved i would choose glsammy's and i will try to explain why

there both very good and quite an improvement of the original post and considering you only had a 800 x 600 image to work with i'm impressed with what you both achieved

glsammy's retouch looks a little more natural to me and has managed to brighten the image up without blowing the highlights and has brought out the darker detail
i don't know if sharpening has been added the image was quite sharp to begin with so in my view didn't really need sharpening any more
saturation looks untouched or a very little amount of tweeking i'm not sure
all in all it's good



thanks to both of you for taking the time and effort to show what can be achieved

NO problem.
Basically I uses the Shadows/Highlight tool. Plus of course smoothing out the background. Your right, it was a sharp image. I didn't think it needed any.