2 ducks - one for C&C and other needs PS help

CraggyIslander

Was in the botanic gardens today at lunchtime and caught this ducking making a perfect V in perfectly still water:

duck1

A little bit further up was her sister prettying herself perched on the waterfall... my attempt at a crop is here but I need to brighten up the duck somehow in PS.. being a PS novice, I am lost on that. The original pic for the second one can be found here (warning big filesize)

mikeanywhere

Love the duck1 picture - good capture!

Fajitas!

I'm all over the place at the moment with Final Cut Pro, but as soon as I get back onto something with Photoshop, I'll give that duckie a run for it's money!

I think a tighter crop on the first one'd give it more movement, but it's a nice shot.

Tarakiwa

I am afraid that I am no use to you re PS ......... I have never used it!

BUT .... your 1st shot is great! Really lovely picture!

T

elven

Does this link work...?

http://static.flickr.com/119/286676264_06fc6cbfe6_o_d.jpg

I think it makes you download it rather than viewing it in ie. But you get the idea. I just duplicated the layer and did a shadows/highlights with a mask so that it only applied it to the duck. Would be nice with a bit of a crop but I left everything else as is.

CraggyIslander

Thank you Fajitas! I just know there's some mad picture hiding in there with the psychedelic green reflections n all.. but dont know how I can get it out of it

CraggyIslander

elven wrote:

Does this link work...?

http://static.flickr.com/119/286676264_06fc6cbfe6_o_d.jpg

I think it makes you download it rather than viewing it in ie. But you get the idea. I just duplicated the layer and did a shadows/highlights with a mask so that it only applied it to the duck. Would be nice with a bit of a crop but I left everything else as is.

Woot!!! thank you elven Think i'll need to get me some PS skills after M$ course is finished

Ruu_Old

duck1 is very well captured, I wouldn't change it. Just my opinion. Thanks for sharing.

Fajitas!

Better late than never, so they say!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v706/FajitasGTR/duckedit-1.jpg

That link should work... It should lead you to a 1mb version, let me know if you want the full one and I can email it on to you

eamon234

I agree duck 1 capture is perfect as is the lighting very nice shot! What camera are you using by the way?

Fajitas!

Canon 30D by the looks of the exif files

Maestro 2000

You would be best to flash the duck with a diffuser on the flash head when taking the shot. Since you didn't you have to ut the duck out with a magnetic lasso and change its levels and curves. Then deselect and clean up any obvious edges.

Fenster

#1 is just perfect.

5uspect

nice shots, very crisp and well lit.
I've attached my attempt at shopping duck2.
Basically I duplicated the layer
Went to image>Adjustments>Shadow highlight and fiddled until the duck seemed brighter. (You could use any method for doing this such as levels or curves)
Added a layer mask to the duplicated (and brightened layer)
Filled it with Black to make the layer invisible and started to paint on grays and whites with a soft brush to get the brightness back as desired.

You could just add an adjustment layer and fiddle with its layer mask also. (Which is a lot less messing about too!!!)

CraggyIslander

Thank you all

Yep Fajitas, well spotted, the 30D is my new toy and loving it Both pics were taken with the 100mm 2.8 lens. Second one probly would have come out bit brighter with the zoom lens, but there were other ducks swimming up to her so she wasnt gonna be there much longer posing like that

5uspect, I'm completely lost with what you did there, but i'll try to fiddle sometime during the week and see if I can reproduce that ... probly not, but i'll have a go.. gotta learn somehow

5uspect

Oh I'm sorry, looking at my post its a bit muddled alright!
Basically what I was trying to get across was that a layer mask is a very nice way of doing non-destructive editing that allows you to easily try different things quickly.

Assuming you don't know that a layer mask is, it is essentially a transparency map applied to a layer in PS. You can add one by clicking the third symbol in from the left on the bottom of the layer pallet. (It looks like a gray box with a white circle in it.) when you add a layer mask to your layer it puts a second thumbnail beside the image thumbnail. This is usually just plain white. This means that the layer is fully visible. If you click on the layer mask's thumbnail (A little box around it shows its selected as can be seen in the pic in my other post) you can then paint on your image with your brush tools or gradient tools. Painting black makes the pixels on that layer transparent and painting white makes them visible, obviously then painting gray gives a partial transparency. This is easier than just using the eraser tool to delete pixels because you're just hiding them. I hope this makes sense.

So you can apply a brightness adjustment or colour adjustment or whatever to a duplicated layer of your image and then apply a layer mask to that layer and only the parts you want remain visible by making the layer mask in those areas white or gray.

An adjustment layer is useful in that you can add an adjustment like levels to a document over all the layers beneath the adjustment layer without actually applying it directly to the pixels in each layer, (its like putting a coloured transparent piece of glass over a photo but in PS it does more useful things)
And because the effect is contained in a different layer no pixels were harmed and the layer can be made inviible by clicking the eyeball symbol beside the layer thumbnail. Adjustment layers are found to the right of the layer mask symbol - the ning nang type circle thingy.

Sorry again for the confusion

I've attached some more pics to help (hopefully!)
I used a soft brush to paint the black X so the edges are gray which makes the blue pixels at the edge of the X in the top layer semi transparent so the X appears purple at its edge.

CraggyIslander

thanks 5uspect,

Been fiddlin with a simple pic and think I've got the gist of what you're doing.. now if only I can get the hang of layers.. just need to practice more