Red-Shouldered Hawk on a gloomy day.

[shefjr]

yeah, I only do raw too, even on events/conventions that I cover taking thousands of images...in camera jpeg has it's place, but I a little extra work on the raw is worth it IMO...so in PE10 are you using adobe camera raw to process the raw files? if so, go to the lens correction tab, and under 'color' you can remove CA there...

I have checked and I have no lens correction for camera raw 6.7 which is what I have with PE10. I own CS6 but, it's for a MAC that I haven't yet purchased. That is one of this years photography purchases.

That looks great!
i guess it's stupid of me to think but, I was staying true to the actual sky color which was a melancholy grey sky. The edited sky you did is much brighter. I guess the lesson I learn here though is that everything is edited and if it improves a photo why not? <rhetorical question>

Generally when shooting birds you have a choice of background or subject for proper exposure. This is because many times we find ourselves shooting up at a plain sky or something. It's part of the game. You kind of split the difference which caused a slight underexposure on the bird. Not bad, just a little bit. Not a bad choice either since you didn't overexpose the sky and kept it a moderate gray.

In this case either or both are actually relatively easy to fix. I adjusted the shot for the bird, really just moved the white point, and then very quickly and sloppily selected the background and darkened it to put the sky back to darker gray. There is some haloing in places because I wasn't real careful separating the background. It could have been done much better but I was just trying to demonstrate what can be done with just a little work.

Beautiful bird, and a great job of catching her.

Scott,
Thanks for the demonstration. I like how you were able to manage both the bird and the background. I'm not sure how simple it would be with PSE10 but, for all intents and purposes, I know it can be done. Also, I have adjusted the EV in the camera so that I get the birds properly exposed but, the backgrounds overexposed. These are not quite the best representation of that but, there is a little bit of a story behind why it isn't adjusted properly. Long story short, my arms were shaking from holding the lens up and standing still for so long. There was no way I could have chimped and adjusted the EV without possibly scaring the bird.
I'm still learning and working towards the quality levels of yourself and the other birders on here.