I think something is not quite right with these two images, Robin - They appear extremely noisy for a 7D2 at ISO 1000
Are they very large crops, or has something strange happened during post-processing?
Russ
Hi Robin
Sorry I couldn't get back sooner! Clearly you have a difficult subject here, and the angle of the incident light does not help either. The originals and edits all show a level of colour noise which I simply can't explain - I am not familiar with Aperture, so I do not know how it copes with different kinds of noise in your image. I haven't noticed similar problems with your other 7D2 shots before.
In 2A you might like to try reducing the blue saturation level on the whole image to see whether you can reduce the blue tints from the feathers - other than that I am at a loss!
After all of your effort, it is a shame that more cannot be salvaged from these shots - perhaps some of the more experienced PP experts on the forum can offer more advice?
Russ
when i,m faced with with a difficult one to get right robin ,rather than using the aperture first then photoshop to finish way ,i export a 16bit tiff file (untouched) straight into ps6 and edit the whole thing from there ,it takes any mistakes your making in aperture out of the equation .if you need any help you have my phone number .
trouble is you have chosen a really bad subject matter that is lit by a harsh winter light as well and unless the original file went bang and smacked you across the face because it was so right ,then its best just to write it off and move on .the other alternative is to buy something like a nikon D810 that has a better dynamique range to start with .in this game every things a compromise or costs you mega bucks to start with
Robin, just bin them and hope you will get a better opportunity and move on
the shots are poor in all respects
....Oh, thankyou, Bill.... NOT !!!!
Regardless of whether either of these shots are okay or not, they offer an opportunity for me to LEARN something about post-processing. As you said yourself: "shadowy white birds are difficult ".