Kooky

[Ironwood]

Its not a laughing matter you know.

[Ironwood]

I find the background a bit distracting on this one.

[sejac]

A couple of beaut shots here. Maybe the background in #2 is a bit busy, it's true. Maybe crop a bit off from the LHS.

Have you tried sharpening the images a bit in PP? Might give them a bit more punch. Focus looks very good.

[P Plates]

Nice shots and he certainly knew you were there. Not sure what processing programme you use but you could try desaturating the background in #2 to make it less bright which should make it less distracting. It's a great composition.

[loose cannon]

Quite a difference in the two frames. Can you tell us what processing has been done to them?

[Ironwood]

Quite a difference in the two frames. Can you tell us what processing has been done to them?

I took those shots in December, so I cant remember exactly, but will have a look tonight.

They were done in Apple Aperture, and Nik Dfine noise reduction applied.
I also normally apply a bit of sharpening and contrast also.

[P Plates]

With birds I usually brush the define layer onto the background only. The birds usually can have a bit of noise without being too noticeable. It may be why they look a little soft.

[Ironwood]

With birds I usually brush the define layer onto the background only. The birds usually can have a bit of noise without being too noticeable. It may be why they look a little soft.

I am a bit of a beginner when it comes to PP, I didn't even know you could just apply it to the background. So much to learn.

[P Plates]

With Nik instead of clicking ok when finished you just click on brush then you can brush the effect on wherever you want it. You could also use control points to reduce the effect where you don't want it whilst in Nik.

[Ironwood]

OK, I checked on the originals of these shots. I remember the conditions when I took those shots, the bird was sitting on a branch of my Grapefruit tree, it was in very deep shade. The exif for the 2nd shot is 300mm f5.6, iso 200, shutter 1/20th, it was handheld which explains any softness. I am pretty sure that version that I uploaded was the result of one of the presets in "colour efex pro 4" I will upload the uncropped image as it is sooc, just reduced in size. Anyone who wants to have play with it feel free to do so. Hopefully I haven't made the file too small to be of any use (148kb).

[inapickle]

I've had a play with with your second kookaburra photo, to see if I could soften the effect of the background. I used layers in photoshop to separate the kookaburra from his background. The background I blurred with a Gaussian blur, whilst I sharpened and bought out some of the detail in the kookaburra. A curves adjustment layer was used to generally brighten and lighten the entire photo. At the same time I cloned out the small branch at the top left of the photo and the large tree trunk on the right hand side.

[Ironwood]

WOW, that looks much better, what a big difference that makes.

I don't have Photoshop, so I can't do the layers thing. But I will have a look at what I can do with the tools that I have.

Thanks for taking the time to have a play with it.

[inapickle]

Some software has an "adjustment" brush, or some similarly named tool. It selectively lets you apply effects to parts of the image instead of the whole image. See if your software has something like that. Maybe your software can already do layers. Photoshop is not the only software that can. The free open source imaging software "Gimp" certainly can do layers.

Don't forget you had to take the photo suitable to be edited effectively. That was the hardest part of the battle. Sure it would be great to always get the results in camera, but sometimes circumstances and time are against us to do that.