Corella's over the Mangroves

[Grumpy John]

I'm having so much fun with my camera and CC2020 lately, but maybe this is going too far.

I managed to jag some half decent shots of Corella's in flight today, but the suburban backdrop doesn't do the birds justice. I went looking for a background to drop them on to and found an old sunset from Tooradin, where I used to live.

#1 The Corellas


#2


#3 The more the merrier.


#4 The background.


#5 How do the birds look, too big, too low in the sky. Any feedback appreciated. I know that I will have to fix the last birds wing.

[Grumpy John]

I did a bit more work on this today.
I colour corrected the birds, among other things, but my wife liked them white. She thinks that with the birds having the colour correction they don't stand out enough and the dark clouds become the hero of the image. Dammit, she does have a point.

[Isac]

With the birds on a separate layer, I'd zoom them in a fair bit to make them the main object and take up most of the image. This is what I mean. You could resize to whatever floats your boat.

[Grumpy John]

And blur the background even more? It is set to 7px. Gaussian blur at the moment.

[Isac]

You blur to what you think it should be, there's no set rule. I only used your BG to show how the birds would look if their size was increased.

[Grumpy John]

That's all for tonight.

[Isac]

Very good except you need to fix the halos. Easy enough:
1. Hold CTRL and click on the mask. That selects the birds.
2. On the top menu, click SELECT > MODIFY > CONTRACT. Start with 2 pixels and click OK. You'll see the marching ants move inwards slightly
(if you need more in the selection, go back to CONTRACT and add more pixels).
3. Press CTRL + SHIFT + I to invert the selection. You'll see the marching ants now include the image border.
4. Press "D" to reset the color swatch. Foreground should be WHITE.
5 Press CTRL + DEL to fill the mask selection with BLACK. Press CTRL + D to deselect.
All done. If it's not looking good, redo it and select more or less pixels in CONTRACT.

[Grumpy John]

I hadn't finished going around the birds at this stage Isac, but thanks for the tip on how to do the final "fix"

[Isac]

You're welcome John - any time. You really are getting good at this. Perseverance is the key. The one major issue with masking is halos so everything you learn to do to get rid of them is a plus.

[Grumpy John]

I did the 2 px nudge and lightened the shadow on the lower middle Corella's wing. I'm pretty happy with the edit now. There's always something that could be improved on, but I'm calling this one finished.

[Isac]

No need for more editing John, it's looking good. You've learned a few good techniques with this one, so well done. You're bag of tricks is getting heavier.