Eagle owl

perylousdemon · Mar 7, 2007

This is a shot (in three phases of post-processing) of the National Aviary's eagle owl. Tell me what you think and which you like best. Thanks.

1) This is the original shot. I had my work cut out for me.

2) This is the cropped version with noise greatly reduced in Neat Image and levels adjusted in Photoshop, but you'll notice that some noise is still present among the feathers of her head.

3) Finally, after having had it up to here with the horribly bright background and the noise that just wouldn't go away, I decided to use duotone in Photoshop. That served to both make the noise in the feathers unnoticeable and to lessen the brightness of the background. I also used the smart sharpen tool to remove motion blur. Frankly, I like the way it turned out.

LaFoto · Mar 8, 2007

Well, this was a difficult exposure to begin with, dark owl against the bright sky behind the cage as background plus the need to "lose" the mesh of the cage through long focus and blurring it out ... and the fact that the eye is not quite in focus will always show. When you selectively light up the owl against the background you will get noise. When you selectively sharpen the eye, you will get noise in that area. Which shows that only so much can be done with a photo that was a very difficult exposure (and maybe one gone slightly wrong, too?) ... but you did what you could and have come to a version that you like.

Personally I prefer your first edit (version 2) to the duotone because of the brighter eyes (wonderful orange) in that still colourful version. Exactly that brightness (representing alert to me) of its eyes I am missing in the last. Also I think that the last is no longer that noisy on the feathers but at the same time also less detailed.

You can see that it was a hard case to begin with, so you cannot expect to suddenly bring about a "Nat-Geo-photo", can you? You didn't, I know! And you did well in working on it!!!

perylousdemon · Mar 8, 2007

Thank you, Corinna. Perhaps I'll tool around with it a little more today. I, too, like the bright orange color of her eyes, but the noise in her feathers just bothers me beyond all belief. I suppose I could try increasing the strength of the noise reduction in Neat Image and see what comes of it.

Alex_B · Mar 8, 2007

i prefer the second.

what do you think of my version? I am not really happy with my efforts though .. it is a difficult one

perylousdemon · Mar 8, 2007

That's pretty much the reason I gave up on the color version. Too much noise and blue tint caused by the backlighting around her face. I should have taken it from a different angle, since she wasn't in a cage. Her handler had her out and on her arm. Thanks for the effort, though.

perylousdemon · Mar 8, 2007

Well, after many failed attempts, here's the best I could come up with. This version is actually a combination of a couple other versions I had; it's as close to a color version I could get without the huge amount of noise.