Birds from the "Bird Kingdom"- Niagara.

[Nathaniel]

(a) A colourful parrot


(b) Red Ibis


(c) Red Ibis again.


(d) A Grey Parrot ???


(e) Not sure of it's name!!


(f) Another Parrot

[hhcanon]

Re: Birds from the "Bird Kingdom"- Niagara.

Nice colourful birds Nathaniel. I cant help thinking they all looka little soft. I feel I was terrible at processing for ages so maybe shoiuld not preach. however i 'grabbed' your first image and had a play-I truly hope you dont mind and will remove if you are in any way offended, but Ive given it a wee sharpen - ????

[Nathaniel]

Re: Birds from the "Bird Kingdom"- Niagara.

Hi! hhcanon. don't worry. I am not at all offended. Infact I should have tweaked some of these before posting but was too lazy. I have so many photos to sort out having used 3 camera bodies with appropriate lenses. I will anyway, hereafter tweak my pics a little before I post now that I am getting the hang of PP!!!

[Hereford_EOS2]

Re: Birds from the "Bird Kingdom"- Niagara.

A nice set Nathaniel, well done.

[MX5]

Re: Birds from the "Bird Kingdom"- Niagara.

Nat - remember with DPP you can set up a production line ; save a recipe (the things you did to a single image) and then apply it to a batch of many images. See Canon DLC tutorial.

I've seen something similar done with Photoshop, but the example I was shown required programming knowledge (the inbuilt language that PS use) so for a limited audience. Search Google for Photoshop Scripting if you are interested. But a big caveat since it's writing programs, unless there are ready to roll scripts that do what you want?

[Nathaniel]

Re: Birds from the "Bird Kingdom"- Niagara.

Thanks Stephen, MX5. Yes, I will try to understand the DPP better and tweak my pics a little bit before posting. I have always been against PP but I find that it is so common and esp it doesn't alter the image too much- such as bringing in blue skies when none existed before etc etc. Thanks for the tutorial MX5

[MX5]

Re: Birds from the "Bird Kingdom"- Niagara.

I have always been against PP ...

There's nothing 'wrong' (IMvHO) with using a bit of levels and some sharpening (after all your camera may have already done some of this if you got Picture Styles set to something other than neutral). But cloning out stuff (like HMS Belfast in yesterdays news) (I might do this <1% of the time) or placing something in the picture that wasn't there (Can't think I've done this) is all well and good ... but a different kettle of fish.

[briansquibb]

Re: Birds from the &quot;Bird Kingdom&quot;- Niagara.

Personally I like to keep the photo as I could have taken it had the camera been ideal or I did some mild tidying/gardening

- levels and sharpening are fine
- removing items that dont materially affect the photo - maybe a supermarket bag on the grass - fine
- removing items that were there and always would be there - trees, telegraph poles etc - no change

There is always a grey area - I am conservative on removing items so if there is doubt I dont remove them.

[Deva32]

Re: Birds from the &quot;Bird Kingdom&quot;- Niagara.

I am a bit like Nathaniel. I don't like tinkering, but maybe that's because I am not very good at understanding layers etc. On the advice of one or two forum members recently I have only just started doing some sharpening and I must admit it has made a difference.
I don't have Photoshop. I rely on the Mac's iPhoto editing tools which are quite good.
I do have DPP, but I assumed that was just for raw processing. Can it be used just for jpegs?
Thanks

Ian

[briansquibb]

Re: Birds from the &quot;Bird Kingdom&quot;- Niagara.

DPP can handle jpegs

However to get the best image quality, shoot in RAW, load into DPP and do your adjustments then save as a jpeg - you can also resize at the same time.

Brian

[MX5]

Re: Birds from the &quot;Bird Kingdom&quot;- Niagara.

I do have DPP, but I assumed that was just for raw processing. Can it be used just for jpegs?

Oh yes ... just save to a different file (unlike RAWs you can't undo changes after the event)

Brian beat me by a few minutes !

[Deva32]

Re: Birds from the &quot;Bird Kingdom&quot;- Niagara.

OK. Thanks to you both.

[Petros]

Re: Birds from the &quot;Bird Kingdom&quot;- Niagara.

Going back to film days, we sent off our precious "raws" for some spotty faced trainee to feed into a mechanical monster preset to give an average rendition of colour balance, contrast, image sharpness etc and got pretty erratic results. We now have the ability to ensure that our shots are presented in the way we see best - definite progress in my mind. I am however pretty much in Brian's camp as to changing image content - I like to present things pretty much as I see them, and if I can foresee something that will be a problem in a print I will change position or zoom to exclude it at the shooting stage. It's good discipline to try and visualise the final image in entirety before pressing the shutter.