mjmw
formally known as mw_aurora
Going through and cleaning out some old images today and came across this one. Unfortunately I completely screwed up the shot...well the exposure and let the Puffin get way ahead of me in the frame. Taking a closer look I noticed that the bird was actually sharp so spent 15 minutes working it up. I don't think it was a bad result from what I started with although some pixel purists may not agree with a couple of the steps. It goes without saying that I would have preferred the (much better) result if I had got it right from the camera.
Note that both images were processed with the same settings from RAW, except exposure adjustment.
High level steps:
1. Increased exposure by 1.5 in RAW processing
2. Exported to 16 bit TIFF
3. Opened in PS and changed the image to 8 bit (this seems to work better than going straight to 8 bit TIFF on noisy images with Breezebrowser Pro).
4. Extended the canvas on the left by 1200 pixels
5. Cut the right 1200 pixels and pasted them to the left
6. Flattened the layers and used the heal tool to smooth the join
7. Cropped the image to lose the dead right hand side of the image
8. Used Neatimage to remove the colour noise introduced by the high increase in exposure at RAW processing (but this lost some detail in the Puffin)
9. Processed as usual (levels, colour balance, saturation, dust clean-up)
10. Cropped to 8:5 ratio, resized and USM
Looking at it again, I could probably improve the join between the moved pixels and recover some of the lost detail by being more selective in the noise reduction and some selective increase in contrast but as the bird is not that large in the frame to start with I don't think I'll bother. Interesting to see what can be 'recovered' relatively quickly and easily because I shot RAW.
Cheers Mark.
Note that both images were processed with the same settings from RAW, except exposure adjustment.
High level steps:
1. Increased exposure by 1.5 in RAW processing
2. Exported to 16 bit TIFF
3. Opened in PS and changed the image to 8 bit (this seems to work better than going straight to 8 bit TIFF on noisy images with Breezebrowser Pro).
4. Extended the canvas on the left by 1200 pixels
5. Cut the right 1200 pixels and pasted them to the left
6. Flattened the layers and used the heal tool to smooth the join
7. Cropped the image to lose the dead right hand side of the image
8. Used Neatimage to remove the colour noise introduced by the high increase in exposure at RAW processing (but this lost some detail in the Puffin)
9. Processed as usual (levels, colour balance, saturation, dust clean-up)
10. Cropped to 8:5 ratio, resized and USM
Looking at it again, I could probably improve the join between the moved pixels and recover some of the lost detail by being more selective in the noise reduction and some selective increase in contrast but as the bird is not that large in the frame to start with I don't think I'll bother. Interesting to see what can be 'recovered' relatively quickly and easily because I shot RAW.
Cheers Mark.
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