Critique Goldfinch

My experience of seeing Goldfinches is that the red on the face is normally more richer than this shot….but could be time of year or drab specimen?
 
I like the composition, nicely done with the branch coming in from the corner and leading the eye to the Goldfinch. It's well posed too and looks sharp enough. I'm not sure about the letterbox format personally, I'd go a bit more square, cropping a bit off (about 1/3rd) the LHS but still giving the Goldfinch room to look into.

The processing seems a little odd, it looks that it' s been exposed to protect the whites and brighter areas? This has resulted in a dark, shadowy image. It's a mistake I often make with Kingfishers. The yellow looks like it's about to pop and this all suggests a tricky exposure with the given light.

I'm not sure if you have a radial masking tool in DXO but you could select areas of the Goldfinch and work on them, lightening the darker areas and pulling back the brighter ones. One trade off with brightening dark areas is the possibility of introducing (or more, bringing out) noise and grain.


I think it's nice image in the making. (y)
 
Dale. said:
I like the composition, nicely done with the branch coming in from the corner and leading the eye to the Goldfinch. It's well posed too and looks sharp enough. I'm not sure about the letterbox format personally, I'd go a bit more square, cropping a bit off (about 1/3rd) the LHS but still giving the Goldfinch room to look into.

The processing seems a little odd, it looks that it' s been exposed to protect the whites and brighter areas? This has resulted in a dark, shadowy image. It's a mistake I often make with Kingfishers. The yellow looks like it's about to pop and this all suggests a tricky exposure with the given light.

I'm not sure if you have a radial masking tool in DXO but you could select areas of the Goldfinch and work on them, lightening the darker areas and pulling back the brighter ones. One trade off with brightening dark areas is the possibility of introducing (or more, bringing out) noise and grain.


I think it's nice image in the making. (y)
Click to expand...
Hi, Thankyou for the feedback, can you point me in the direction a tutorial that deals with just bird image PP please? Everywhere you look for video it is either Landscape or Portrait how-to.
In fact every time a new software comes out it's all about the latter. Thanks again, Russ.
 
russellsnr said:
Hi, Thankyou for the feedback, can you point me in the direction a tutorial that deals with just bird image PP please? Everywhere you look for video it is either Landscape or Portrait how-to.
In fact every time a new software comes out it's all about the latter. Thanks again, Russ.
Click to expand...

No worries, my pleasure.

There are a ton of tutorials around. YouTube is good and a very useful tool, both for processing tips and also, on taking the images and getting right what you can in camera, before considering PP.

In all honesty though, some of my biggest learning curve has been here on TP. Take a look back on some of the work here, in the Birds forum as well as in the Wild and Free forum. I've spent hours here too and also gotten some great advice. It's a journey, that doesn't happen overnight and it never ends.

Also, remember that your style is your own, it's ok to listen to good advice and apply it but put your own stamp on the end product. (y)

Bear with me, I will have a look for one or two bird PP tutorials later or tomorrow.
 
Dale. said:
No worries, my pleasure.

There are a ton of tutorials around. YouTube is good and a very useful tool, both for processing tips and also, on taking the images and getting right what you can in camera, before considering PP.

In all honesty though, some of my biggest learning curve has been here on TP. Take a look back on some of the work here, in the Birds forum as well as in the Wild and Free forum. I've spent hours here too and also gotten some great advice. It's a journey, that doesn't happen overnight and it never ends.

Also, remember that your style is your own, it's ok to listen to good advice and apply it but put your own stamp on the end product. (y)

Bear with me, I will have a look for one or two bird PP tutorials later or tomorrow.
Click to expand...
OK many thanks. In honesty I no all the ins and outs of taking images (well maybe not all) it's the pp I tend to struggle with.
 
I like the picture Russel and perhaps for you this is just a half way stage to creating an even better version of it.

So far so good :D
 
This is taking give the bird something to look into a stage to far , a 5x7 crop would be better, and the colours are at best lacklustre , with any detail fading into darkness . .
Someone that knows how to PP could make this in to a really good image
 
Nice shot. I’d be happy to have taken that.

Can only really echo other comments regarding the pp.

I’d look at the crop for sure. I’d personally lose some of the left side.
And again as others have mentioned it’s ‘flat’ and the Goldfinch is not really ‘popping’.

Would definitely consider some local adjustments to the subject.

I know you say you are using Affinity Photo and in the following video he uses LRc but the techniques and ideas carry across just the process will differ.
Not saying the video is fantastic. I’m not qualified enough or even a bird photographer I just like to look at photos of them and remembered this video. Hopefully it offers you some insight/help.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with if you do re-edit the photo.

Edit: be helpful if I added the link!

View: https://youtu.be/F76o4qLyNVw
 
Last edited:
Rob's link above to Simon's channel is what I had in mind for you too Russell. (y)

I subscribe to Simon's channel, he's very good, at both capturing good files and processing them. :)
 
watching with interest and looking forward to seeing your before and afters, looking to improve my pp efforts (Nikon studio), good luck with it
 
eccles lad said:
watching with interest and looking forward to seeing your before and afters, looking to improve my pp efforts (Nikon studio), good luck with it
Click to expand...
Hi, I will give it another shot but won't be overnight. Just subscribed to a year Lightroom, understand you can stack purchases so looking into that just now while offers are on, not sure how it works. Russ
Sorted with 2 years now
 
Last edited:
So I got the wrong version of L/R (plonker) so have tried again in Affinity Photo but used the Dodge & Burn tool to try and lighten the subject but when I put up here it looks darker than on my monitor (BenQ calibrated)
GoldFinch D&B.jpg
 
If you’re happy to send me the raw file I’ll take a look at it for you. It’ll be lightroom and photoshop based but I’ll just use the tool that should be available in any decent photo software

Details sent via PM

Mike
 
russellsnr said:
So I got the wrong version of L/R
Click to expand...
Wrong version it what regard?

Was you after LRc but have ended up with the ‘cloud’ version?

Can you not change plan?

The mobile/cloud whatever version is still a fairly powerful bit of software. Only caveat is you have to pre process in PureRaw and then add to LR as the cloud version doesn’t accept plugins (iirc).
 
Lost_Manc said:
Wrong version it what regard?

Was you after LRc but have ended up with the ‘cloud’ version?

Can you not change plan?

The mobile/cloud whatever version is still a fairly powerful bit of software. Only caveat is you have to pre process in PureRaw and then add to LR as the cloud version doesn’t accept plugins (iirc).
Click to expand...
Hi, yes that is where I went wrong, I bought the Lightroom plan with 1TB of cloud storage, I don't want Photoshop and am looking for just the Lightroom that allows open with Plugin ???
 
pooley said:
If you’re happy to send me the raw file I’ll take a look at it for you. It’ll be lightroom and photoshop based but I’ll just use the tool that should be available in any decent photo software

Details sent via PM

Mike
Click to expand...
Sent a link via PM.
 
russellsnr said:
Hi, yes that is where I went wrong, I bought the Lightroom plan with 1TB of cloud storage, I don't want Photoshop and am looking for just the Lightroom that allows open with Plugin ???
Click to expand...
Unfortunately that’s the catch with Adobe now.
If you want LRc (Classic like what Simone uses in the linked video) you have to get the plan that includes PS which then includes both versions of Lightroom.

It should be possible to change you plan to the photography plan that includes both Lightrooms but importantly the version you were after but with only 20GB of cloud for the same price as the 1TB Cloud only plan.
This may depend on how you subscribed though but may be worth looking into.
 
Well, this was a very pleasant surprise when I opened the RAW. Perfectly exposed using the right of the histogram, even though it took a high ISO - but we can deal with noise in PP now. Sharp.

I dropped the exposure by 0.25 of a stop, and took a white balance reading off the whites in the tail. Dropped the highlights slider in Lightroom using 50% of what was available to me. That was all.

Into photoshop I ran the image through Topaz Denise using the auto settings on standard. Nothing fancy there.

into PS all I did was reduce the highlights on the white lichen on the branch on the tight hand side, then on another layer lowered some highlights on the bird. 101 ways to do that in any program.

I lightened the area around the eye slightly and added some vibrance to the reds.

Lastly, resize for TP and slightly sharpen the bird. 3 minutes work at most, and only that long because I was thinking there must be something else I need to be doing!

I can only put the darkness down to the monitor being set too bright or not being saved as sRGB for web use

Hope that helped a little

Mike

Goldie-RP.jpg
 
Last edited:
That looks really good, I no my monitor is calibrated correctly so must be something I am doing, will have another go with your PP, have to ask why you don't put the image through a denoising app first as Topaz say that is what you should do (and I do that) with Topaz or DXO.
Thanks again, Russ.
 
No worries Russ,

the monitor may be correctly calibrated for colour, but just check the brightness is correct - most users recommend between 90-120 cdm

Moving on from that, I never found out how to install Topaz into LR, and personally I prefer to be able to use it in PS where its on its own layer and if necessary I can mask out the parts where its too strong.

I've heard Topaz say it should be used at the RAW stage, but I've never been able to get a good answer why. Its excellent when used in PS and a lot more versatile there.

I know you say you don't want PS and yes, there are a stupid number of options available, but I probably never use more than 10 things in there - from the top of my head I may go into LAB mode for colour reason, I use curves a lot, often combined with the colour range selector, and occasionally selective colouring layer. I use the Tim Grey method of dodging and burning (really easy) and luminosity masks for reducing selective highlights (a lot easier than it sounds).

I resize there and sharpen after resizing, and all layers have the option of adding a mask to make the effect more selective.

That may all sound like a load of daft jargon but in reality if its explained to you you'd probably be pretty proficient and at a similar level to me within 1/2 hour of practice

It's really not a program to fear despite the options on offer

Mike
 
very good effort Russell big improvement on the original , blown away with mikes work ,wow,
just wish I could understand what your all talking about :headbang:
 
Hi, so although I got the wrong version of Lightroom (maybe update when the two years runs out) here is a new try just altered in L/R.
Jay .jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top