Saving the sky

[Edu Lorenzo Jr]

Hello Mastah,

I got this image of a BRT in UPD yesterday. It was not backlit but the sky behind it was reeeeeeeally bright. Metering on the bird, I got this shot:

Camera: Nikon D90
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 400 mm
Exposure: 0.00
ISO Speed: 200

I tried to salvage it. What I wanted to have was a nice blue sky for background. I cropped it, fiddled with the colors, and most drastic was pulling the Shadow, Midtone and Highlight sliders to BLUE for the BG sky (after selecting it with the magic wand)
I also cloned out that wayward branch, did not do quite well so I decided to put the name of the bird in the area that I was not able to clone well. ;D



Problem: all around the bird there seems to be abberation and I think darkening the BG "drowned" the colors of the BRT.

I think it will be drastic but a start from scratch is needed here sir? In a nutshell, what I have is a nicely lit bird with a BG that is too bright.

Thanks in advance mastah!

[Romy Ocon]

Edu, you seem to have the right approach on the sky, you just need to feather the selection well to avoid the halo. Please post a crop similar in size to the second photo, but unedited straight from NEF. Let me try re-doing your approach with feathering on the selection. Save it as highest quality jpeg before posting to preserve more shadow detail.

[Edu Lorenzo Jr]

Hell Mastah and thank you. This "feathering" thing is alien to me.

I have done as asked. Cropped RAW file can be downloaded from here: cid-7d19a0ee43408f6c.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BRT%5E_cropped%5E_Raw.NEF

and the cropped Jpeg Straight from raw is here farm3.static.flickr.com/2693/4072851455_af8484dcc0_o_d.jpg.

[Romy Ocon]

Sorry, I forgot all about this, Edu.

Anyway, I downloaded the crop below, and the difference of tonality between sky and the bird/perch is so great that it's really tough to pull it off. You have to practically change the BG color, and that will involve major PP surgery. In the end, you'll be left with a digital art, rather than a natural history type of photo. I think it's actually easier to look for the bird again and hope the BG and lighting are better than to embark on the major PP surgery.

[Edu Lorenzo Jr]

Thank you mastah.. hmmm.. then I will be looking for it again this saturday.