Sunfish 33 Loc: Merritt Island, Fl

I've been playing around with this image. It's a bad photo of a Redtailed Hawk but I loved the look on his face. So I decided to play around with it using PSE9. My first feeble attempt at being creative. Any suggestions on what I can do with this besides click delete? Please feel free to do whatever with this image. Thanks in advance for your help.

lorenww Loc: St. Petersburg

Post the original for download, someone should jump in.

Sunfish 33 Loc: Merritt Island, Fl

it was shot in raw...CR2...here's the jpeg.

original converted to jpeg

gregoryd45 Loc: Fakahatchee Strand

It's amazing what you can do in PP with a so so shot, nice job

3Dean Loc: Southern California

Did you use a filter effect? it looks like paint strokes. It's not bad considering that it's cropped so tight.

Since you said that you didn't mind if we worked on your image, I took a slightly different approach and cropped it to use the post as part of the composition.

I was just noodling around and didn't keep track of exactly what I did, but as you can see from the screenshot, I used several Photoshop layers in an attempt to adjust the dynamics of the image.

The Background copy layer includes a mask that let me make adjustments to the hawk with the dodge tool without affecting anything else.
The Color Balance layer was used to remove a little bit of green.
The Sky Layer with mask allowed the insertion of a more pleasing sky color.
The Levels layer adjusted the over all range of light to dark in the image, giving it a little more "pop".
The Vibrance layer allowed me to make the colors a bit more intense.

After finalizing the adjustments, I flattened the image and used the "Unsharp Mask" filter to increase the image sharpness a bit.

I used Photoshop CS5, and I'm not sure if Photoshop Elements has all of these features, but hopefully some of this will still be useful.

If you still have the RAW version of the file you may be able to achieve even better results.

sharmon Loc: California/Bend, OR

I looove that shot and I have been taking pics of redtail haws from the sky but have not captured the face so well. However, I recommend that if you can save in the raw format which will give you more extensive "processing" capabilities when using Lightroom 4, tho you can also edit jpeg in lightroom. sometimes the facial expressions you capture trump anything else, for example I am uploading a picture I took under difficult lighting and background but just loved the expressions so I fixed it as best I could anyway. I will also upload a pic I took of redtail hawk recently, not as good as yours

sharmon Loc: California/Bend, OR

So I took a shot at this in lightroom 4

llindstrand Loc: Seattle Metro

I tried a couple of edits for you. I did go back and started with your original JPEG
Swede

sharmon Loc: California/Bend, OR

Vignetting is interesting but I really like the one with the branches, nice contrast!

Photo-Al Loc: Sonoma County, CA

I messed a little with the Camera Raw editor on the Jpg file, and didn't crop it as tightly as the first example. I changed the exposure some, the vibrance and contrast and blacks, and then tweaked in just a tad of fill light. I'm playing with the camera raw editor so I'm just learning what the differences are between it and the normal PSE editing.

llindstrand Loc: Seattle Metro

Thank you. I was trying to get something of contrast in the picture. I would agree that the branches are better.
Swede

sharmon Loc: California/Bend, OR

Love what you did with the hawk, but I think your dog image is exceptionally inspired lol

Sunfish 33 Loc: Merritt Island, Fl

Thanks for your help. Yes that's exactly what I did. I'm just trying to learn how to use all the tools in PSE9. I just got Lightroom 4.1 and have seen a couple of tutorials. I got a lot to learn on that one too.

Sunfish 33 Loc: Merritt Island, Fl

Thanks! I still have the original CR2 file and just got Lightroom 4.1. I've got to learn how to use it now. You posted some nice shots.

Sunfish 33 Loc: Merritt Island, Fl

Looks a lot better than mine! Thanks.