How can I sharpen the eye?

[chrisja77]

Is there a way to sharpen the eye on this a little more?

Here is the original...

And here is my crop and edit...

 

[jaicatalano]

Try the unsharpen tool or a high pass. Do you have filters? I have Topaz and it ROCKS. Take a look.

 

[chrisja77]

Taking a look now, thanks. I'm a newb with photos and photoshop but I'm reading and playing all I can!

 

[EIngerson]

No offense, but you're way too far away to stress sharpening the eye. You'd be lucky if the whole head was the focal point. What lens are you shooting with?

 

[redessa]

No offense, but you're way too far away to stress sharpening the eye. You'd be lucky if the whole head was the focal point. What lens are you shooting with?

I agree. Any sharpening filters are just going to degrade the image quality even more. If you wanted to get super OCD about it, you could try to outline the eye with the pencil tool. You'd have to be very precise and adjust the opacity to a subtle enough level.

 

[chrisja77]

I know it's not going to be razor sharp I was just hoping to find a trick that would help a little. The unsharpen tool worked pretty good I think, here is what I ended up with.

And I was shooting with a Canon T3i with a 55-250 lens zoomed all the way in. I was REALLY far away and am really pleased it turned out as good as it has. I cloned out a stick from in front of his head and a couple on his tail and then played with the contrast and stuff a bit. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out after the unsharpen.

 

[EIngerson]

That's nice work for what you described. I think you got what you're goingto get from this photo.

 

[DiskoJoe]

for birds you need some serious firepower. i dont think you have it from what i see here. Regardless, capturing a shot of a bald eagle is very monumental. Congrats.

 

[Destin]

Only problem I see is camera shake cause by your 1/60th shutter speed. It's not soft, it's motion blur caused by camera shake (or could possibly be subject movement, if you were on a tripod), which is not fixable in post.

Your iso was at 400. Should have stepped it up to 1600, and brought the shutter speed up around 1/250th.

 

[Joey_Ricard]

Only problem I see is camera shake cause by your 1/60th shutter speed. It's not soft, it's motion blur caused by camera shake (or could possibly be subject movement, if you were on a tripod), which is not fixable in post.

Your iso was at 400. Should have stepped it up to 1600, and brought the shutter speed up around 1/250th.

Absolutely!
If no time for a tripod setup, a monopod (inexpensive) would have helped to some degree to at least steady a heavy lens.

 

[KmH]

Is there a way to sharpen the eye on this a little more?

It doesn't do much good to sharpen a single pixel.

But, you can use UnSharp Mask (USM) to first enhance local contrast. You set Amount to 10, and the Radius to 200. Maybe even do it a second do it a scond time.
Then use USM normally by setting the Amount to 100 or 150, and the Radius to 1.

 

[Destin]

Only problem I see is camera shake cause by your 1/60th shutter speed. It's not soft, it's motion blur caused by camera shake (or could possibly be subject movement, if you were on a tripod), which is not fixable in post.

Your iso was at 400. Should have stepped it up to 1600, and brought the shutter speed up around 1/250th.

Absolutely!
If no time for a tripod setup, a monopod (inexpensive) would have helped to some degree to at least steady a heavy lens.

Even with the tripod though, at 1/60th you can still get motion blur from the wind moving the branches, or from the bird moving. Even if I'd been on a monopod or tripod for this, I still would have been up around 1/60th and iso 1600.


There is a reason pro bird shooters are using 600 f/4 lenses. You need the reach, AND the speed.