waiting for mum (1 Viewer)

jenygard if you see this pic out of about 150 pics this was the only really clear one.I managed to take all the chick pics and even a young little tern chick with mum,that is on the hodbarrow site,but this was really clear.A young(black backed) gull waiting for mum and having a doze in the sun.
Christine.

Hello Christine,

this picture of juvenile Black-headed Gull is not bad, but can be made better. It has a hazy look, lacking really black tones. I use Levels to bring in black and so increase contrast. The focus is on the birds back, the head is not sharp. You should always try to get the head sharp, that is the most important. I have sharpened it in Photoshop, using Unsharp Mask (USM).

The picture are compressed a little to much to get good results. If you zoom in you picture you will see large blocks of pixels. That should be avoid. Your picture is only 25 kb, you can upload much bigger pictures than that. 100 kb would probably be OK here.

Which programs do you use for postprocessing pictures ?

Jenygard,thankyou.You have really made me feel very sad.I thought that pic was good Cerainly one of the best I have ever taken.we have paintshop pro and elements 2.0.Elements is the one that we keep on the computer.I tend not to mess around with them as i find i make matters worse and end up ruining the pic.But i have taken your points to mind and will have a go with the unsharp mask.re the sizing,every time I submit a pic to the site which i have put to say,800 pixels ,I receive a message saying it is too large.Would i be better off changing the size on the camera to take a smaller size.it is set on the largest size at the moment?.
thankyou Christine.

Christine, you should not be sad, you are on your way towards real good pictures. Always keep the out of the camera original secure, so that you can go back and start over. In a couple of years may be you have learnt more og there are better tools to work on it again.

Regarding the size of picture, there are to different sizes. The first is the pixel size limit that different web sites impose on you. In Birdforum there are several different limits. In the Critique forum you have to limit your picture to 640x480 pixels, in the Gallery you can upload picture size 800x800 pixels. The other size limit is the file size limit. In the gallery the size limit is 250 kb, in the critique forum no limit are mentioned, but I think probably the same. You must use the JPG format, which compress the file by chunking together block of pixels, thereby degrading the picture quality, if compressing to much. When you save as JPG, you have to opportunity to choose the degree of compression. It should be indicated how big the resulting file will be. Some programs let you "Save for web" and give you 2 to 4 picture with different compression to compare. It should not be evident that the picture is compressed.

You must keep the camera setting that you have, you need big files to keep the quality of the picture for viewing on screen and for printing on paper. Myself I convert the JPG made by the camera to TIF, because I don't want the file to be degraded when doing postprocessing with several saves. A JPG file will be more and more chunky if you do so. The back side of that is that the files gets very big and demands much hard disc space.

All digiscopers take hundreds of pictures to get a few good ones, so keep the spirit up, and go out and take some more.

Thankyou,Jenygard,you have made me feel happier now.I will never be an expert photographer,as i have not the patience to read manuals and go into depth.The fact that I managed to take pics of all the chicks on the reserve,and what is more a little tern with chick,which was not a clear photo,but is was there and could be seen.I have made a note of your re-sizing comments,and thankyou jenygard for you patience and time.incidentally the photo of the pipit which you then altered was superb.I would never achieve anything to such a high standard,but congratulations Jenygard,to see one of our feathered friends with such clarity and detail is a privelege.
Christine.