Hello!
This is my first PlayRaw! Yay! I was going to post a JPG but Sammy the Song Sparrow let me capture some RAW of him just now. He was the second one to fly in for the spring here in the center of NY State even though we still have arctic storms (thanks Canada haha!) and he came just in time for the latest bomb storm. The day before was Robins!
The only thing I ask is that you not use Haze because its broken for me and I need to learn how to properly edit photos. I have been going slowly over the years with Lightroom but this year I lost access and that is how I got to Darktable. Flowers are relatively easy but these birds…
and yes, it is through a dirty window… with overcast and very bright snow. For some reason there is too much yellow on his face, he is not yellow in real life.
haha I agree. Winter is not the best time for pictures and windows happen to be great for getting close… I will not be using these for anything except sharing so no big deal for me. It is a great way to learn for me at least, I have to remove so much gunk and learn how.
I went with a more muted interpretation. @AnnieB I used the Diffuse and Sharpen dehaze preset and limited it to the mask of the bird I made with an exposure instance (FluffMask is what I named it for easy identification). You can add/subtract iterations to increase or decrease the amount of dehaze pretty easy.
This is so great! I love everyone’s versions! I am grinning every time I get another email with Sammy in it! His feather structure is so detailed, even if the photo itself sucks, its like a “lens” into the secret bird world.
@AtaraxicShrug I am so glad you got something out of this. I really enjoy this process as well, seeing photos come to life in the edit process.
I used diffusion on the background (inverted bird mask) to reduce the contrast on the branches, and I used an exposure module +0.5 stops on the left side of the bird to accentuate the light coming from the left.
I think you did a nice balance of color vs detail…its easy to try and make the feathers have detail but end up making them like an insect macro…I like your choices…
I tried focusing on the problem of not using the haze removal module with this image. I have read in this forum a few issues with using this module and it not translating correctly in the edited image. That is a shame if that is the case. So I used a strong instance of local contrast and the haze removal preset in the diffuse or sharpen module to replace the use of haze removal module.
EDIT: I bought myself a robot windows cleaner a couple of weeks ago because my house has a glass ceiling. It works great. I used it on my normal windows and now I too will be able to photograph birds through my windows. I feel inspired now. DSCF1593.RAF.xmp (11.3 KB)
