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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

Magpie-lark

Photographed by

Jack Shick on Sat 30th Jun, 2018 and uploaded on Sun 1st Jul, 2018 .

Resolution

1400x933

Viewed

596

31007

Comment

Just wanted some feed back to see if this looks sharper, I exported as a TIFF file in LR6 then re sized to a jpeg after re importing. Any other comments welcome.

Equipment

From the car, Sony a9 hand held at 400mm f6.3 1/160 iso 400.

Location

South end of LHI. My property., Lord Howe Island

Keywords

adult

This image is not available for download.

Ian Wilson	2018-07-01 08:58:03	Hi Jack, Sharpness looks OK. Background has some noise that can be reduced by selecting the background and applying noise reduction to the background only. There is also a magenta colour cast (too much R and B) that you can fix with white balance fine tuning during RAW adjustment. Otherwise all good. Cheers, Ian
Ian Wilson	2018-07-01 09:00:39	Hi Jack, I forgot to mention that the whites are a bit too bright with colour saturation in a few places. You should aim to keep the whites below about 245 digital numbers. Cheers, Ian
Glenn Pure	2018-07-01 09:09:00	Ian beat me to it. I'm guessing you applied sharpening after reducing the size in LR? As for the colour cast, this is most obvious in the whites on the bird and the funny looking colour on the stump. An easy one to fix either at the RAW stage as Ian suggests (the better option) or at the TIFF stage (not quite as good).
Simon Pelling	2018-07-01 15:06:32	Jack Compositionally, try and see what it looks like with the bird pulled a little bit further left into the image perhaps so that the eye is nearer dead centre or even a bit left of centre. Because the bird is looking back towards its tail, it seems a bit too much to the right. You could perhaps then crop out that pale tree or pole on the left hand side in the background. Just an idea. Simon
Jack Shick	2018-07-01 15:08:31	Thanks guys I didn't even notice the colour cast until you pointed it out, with those numbers for whites Ian I only have LR6 there are numbers there at the moment after the change in processing I have +36 for whites. I'm not sure if you can just select an area and apply noise reduction in LR. Yes Glen I always work in raw first crop then do all the other bits. . Thanks Jack.
Ian Wilson	2018-07-01 20:52:34	Hi Jack, I am not a user of LR but my understanding is that the RGB brightness is not displayed as digital numbers (DN) but as a percentage of the maximum brightness that can be displayed. The brightest white (saturated) would be R = 255, G = 255 and B = 255 DN and in LR this corresponds to R = 100%, G = 100% and B = 100%. So neutral white with R = G = B = 245 DN in LR would be R = G = B = 100 x 245/255 = 96%. Regarding local adjustment of noise etc, I think you will need to use LR with a version of Photoshop. LR is rather limited in what it can do, it needs to be coupled with Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CC for best results. I hope this helps. Cheers, Ian
Simon Pelling	2018-07-01 22:24:05	The +36 for white you mention is simply the amount the white slider is adjusted to the right, I think. When you import the image all the sliders (white, black, shadows etc) should be the mid point (ie zero) - in my version of LR the sliders appear on the right hand side of the screen. Dragging the white slider to the right will increase the white level ie the intensity of about the brightest 10% of tones. If you did not do this deliberately then I suspect what you did was click the 'Auto' button to use Lightroom's best estimate of the tonal values across the picture. This button can work quite well but it is best to adjust the whites and blacks manually yourself. As you adjust the sliders you need to watch the numbers for R, G, B in the histogram to check that the values are not 'clipped' ie above 100 or below zero. Just hold the cursor over any point in the image (the cursor normally looks like a 'hand' I think) and look at the RGB numbers which appear under the histogram, which tell you the brightness of the point in the image under the cursor. Alternatively click the small squares in the top right and top left corners of the histogram so that they show with a white outline not a black outline. This turns on exposure warnings in your image meaning LR will show you in the main image window where the blacks are too black (the left hand small square) and the whites are too white (the right hand square). You can check the effect of this by dragging the white slider to the right - as the whites brighten you will suddenly see areas of colour (in mine it is set to red) appear in white areas of the image. This means the whites are near or above 100 in these areas. Drag the slider slightly back to the left so the red colour disappears. This will mean the whitest tones become set just below the 'too bright' stage. Likewise drag the black slider to the left and when you reach about zero in the blacks (too dark) you will start to see blue areas appearing in the image. Drag the black slider a bit back to the right until the blue colour just disappears and you have set the black areas correctly. You will also note that a small white triangle shows in the small squares you clicked at the top of the histogram when you go too black or too white. You then use other sliders (eg Shadows and Highlights to do other tonal adjustments in the 'mid tone' areas of the image, as needed. You can do local adjustments in LR 6. Immediately under the histogram on the right side of the screen is a small row of buttons for Crop, Red Eye removal, Spot Removal, Graduated Filter, Radial Filter, and Adjustment Brush. Adjustment Brush appears as a slider (which adjusts the brush size). You can use the adjustment brush to mark areas of an image for local adjustment including noise reduction. For example you could highlight (paint in) all background areas outside the bird and apply a heavier noise reduction to these areas, and perform other changes such as reductions in sharpening to help smooth out the image. These brushes are powerful but in LR 6 can be a bit clunky and slow, and take some time to learn and some practice to master effectively. This is far too big a topic to cover here and I recommend you look up adjustment brush tutorials in the internet eg YouTube to learn how these are used. LR works very well as a self-contained raw development and image adjustment program, but obviously the full Photoshop (CC) is more powerful in many areas. If you use the full version of Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements, I think you would use a (free) plug in called Camera Raw, which is essentially parts of Lightroom integrated into Photoshop. Last time I looked Camera Raw in Photoshop the version which worked with Elements was somewhat cut down. Also a key feature of Lightroom is its Cataloguing function (ie its image organisation function) which Camera Raw does not have. You may know all this already, of course. If not I hope I haven't confused you further! Simon
Jack Shick	2018-07-03 08:05:03	Thanks heaps Guys, I have been online and found out more on how to use LR a little better. I have been avoiding buying PS for ages now as I'm not a computer wiz..not sure if I could get my head around it without going away and doing a course. cheers Jack.
Glenn Pure	2018-07-05 15:42:10	I think PS is on a subscription basis only now. I'd like to use it but baulk at being captive like that. Shame as it has some nice features from what I've heard. Yes, it is complicated but like anything, the basics should be no more difficult than most other software - just a lot more in there to play with if and when the desire takes you there.
Mark Davidson	2018-09-27 21:06:02	Jack, I would have moved to the left in order to get the bright vertical object out of the frame. Otherwise a pleasing image.

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	63/283 in Critique Gallery
	4/21 by Jack Shick
	36/86 of Magpie-lark
	177/432 of Monarch and Flycatchers
	13128/34493 Overall
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