How to make the fantail more visible

[silverbirch]

I took this photo last year. These birds are very active and move quickly so it a lucky snap, and at the end of the zoom range. I cropped it back to this.

I'd like to enhance the bird somehow, as there's little contrast in colour between the bird and the background. I have Photoshop cs2 which I am slowly teaching myself. If anyone could advise I'd be most appreciative. Thanks

[ArmySoldier777]

Silverbirch,

Because of the image quality in this picture, the options are a little less than normal for making the bird stand out. If you happened to shoot this in RAW, then that would make a huge difference and give you a lot more to work with. I'm sure we could still attempt some things with the JPEG file, but before we get into that it'd definitely be a plus to edit the RAW file instead

David

[cyber3d]

Hi, so I did a quickie PSD on the shot.

1. Copy base layer and save it as top layer (layer #2)
2. Create a marquee around the bird itself. Copy the selection (ctrl-C). Save it as a top layer (layer #3) (ctrl-V).
3. On layer #2 create a rectangular horizontal marquee right through the bird from edge to edge. The rectangle should be about 1/2 as high as the bird is tall and right through the center.
4. Top menu bar > Selection > Modify > Feather (in this case because the image was small I chose a 20 pixel feather). Invert this selection (cmd-opt-i on the MAC).
5. Top menu bar > Filter > Blur > Gaussian. Play around with the degree of blur.
6. On the top layer only, I changed the levels. I brought up the blacks.

That's it. I think it helped. Take your time doing this if you want to try it.

BTW, I always make a copy of the base layer - this is so that I can always go back to the original quickly and can compare changes faster.

[silverbirch]

Thanks for the advice. I took the photo using the "burst" function because the birds rarely remain still for more than a second or so. I've tried to get photos using RAW, at the time this was taken I didn't understand about RAW and have only been using it a few weeks. The RAW images are certainly superior! I'll keep trying however. Now that it's spring I might get a shot one calm evening.

Thanks for the Photoshop tips I'll have a play - I like what you've done though. I now have another couple of images in the camera, but still only jpeg and similar (poor) quality.

Many thanks for the comments.