tiphareth51 Loc: Somewhere near North Pole, Alaska

Today the elusive pileated woodpecker finally stayed long enough to be photographed. With the snow white background and the contrast of his dark body, getting it 'right' was as elusive as the bird itself. These situations are always difficult for me. The original photo had lost detail in the black feathers. Through some of the Perfectly Clear tools, some of the lost detail in the black body feathers were retrieved. I would rather not post the original but will post the 'adjusted' copy. Your comments and suggestions on how to handle these types of situations would be appreciated. Please be gentle as I am no where near the level of professional photographer that I see posting here.
Thank you.

(Download)

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Excellent.

User ID

Looks way better than your humble text explanation was leading me to expect. Quite decent !

Don’t know if raw is your habit but when faced with a major DR range you should always include raw just for “insurance”. Maybe the image here is from a raw file. Can’t guess that online.

tiphareth51 Loc: Somewhere near North Pole, Alaska

The image is from a jpg file. My knowledge of processing 'raw' is non-existent. Perhaps I will take a class on it. Thank you for responding.

User ID

Take that advice about using raw for “insurance” just when conditions look very tricky. Shoot raw+jpg when needed and someday after you learn to process raw files you’ll have a few that are worth working on. Processing raw is less work than rescuing a jpg !

RightOnPhotography Loc: Quebec,QC

If it was a raw file, it would take you one minute to fix it in the Lightroom.

KindaSpikey Loc: English living in San Diego

I think you handled this situation extremely well! It really doesn't appear that you need very much instruction at all. I'm just going to say well done and keep doing what you're doing.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

One possibility is to download Nikon's free editor NX Studio and import the raw files into that. By default it will apply the in-camera Picture Control profile that you have selected, but it gives you the option of applying any of the other profiles (Neutral, Standard, Vivid etc), or if you want you can adjust any of the Picture Control settings yourself.

You can even create your own set of settings and save them as your own profile for that particular camera. I have a profile where the Picture Control Sharpening and Clarity are set to zero (the sharpening that's used for jpg is crude and I can do it better in Lightroom, plus Clarity can give diffuse haloing when you ramp up Contrast in whatever photo editor you're using). NX Studio also provides other adjustments and editing tools, but it's not as comprehensive as the best photo editors.

Why go through NX Studio? Because if you want you can get all of the adjustments that the in-camera jpeg would have got but at the same time you can hold on to the greater bit-depth of the raw file for further editing in NX Studio or if you export as TIFF* (tif extension) (* an exported jpeg has 8-bit data plus image compression which means a loss of data, whereas tif creation is lossless).

The best answer is to learn to edit raw files yourself. However, if you follow the above workflow you can export as tif to one of the AI packages like Topaz Clear.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

Fantastic image!!!
The woodpecker is the star!!! the less detail in the background the better ( less distraction) for the viewer, IMO the only time you would want the background in focus is when you want to show the habitat of the subject.

J-SPEIGHT Loc: Akron, Ohio

srsincary Loc: Cary, NC

Nice shot!
I switched to shooting raw 3-4 years ago when I first joined UHH and heard the same advice as you are being given. Spot on. 👍

ELNikkor

I did not know there was such a thing as a pileated woodpecker, but I had read about the possible extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Imagine my thrill first time I saw a pileated woodpecker when I moved to Florida; thought I was spotting an ivory-billed! Great shot of the pileated!

ISOlate Loc: Maine

It looks to me like there is still ~1/3 of a stop of exposure left which would brighten up the photo overall and perhaps recover any more detail in the black feathers.

autofocus Loc: North Central Connecticut

Don't be intimidated to try working in RAW, it's cake! The tools available are pretty much self explanatory and easily understood. And RAW will give you more latitude to make adjustments in white balance, exposure, and you can even do it with the individual color channels, and it provides a good histogram while you are making those adjustments. Try it, you'll be amazed with how easy it is, and you'll never go back to shooting straight JPEG again. I'm working in an older version of ACR, so I can't speak for the other tools that are available, but ACR was quite easy to learn.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

There are lots of free YouTube videos on processing RAW files. Just be aware that many of them are made by amateurs and reflect their own bias in how they do stuff. Shooting in RAW gives more tools to adjust exposure and other features that you can’t do with a JPEG file.