Excellent capture, maybe a bit too central. Did a mod where I cropped the RH side and extended the canvas on the LH side, cloning the wall in.

Hope you like it.

Did a mod to reduce the sky in #1. To my mind makes a better composition.

I like the composition in #3

With #3 Tim, the BG is too cluttered. What you could do is create an overlay layer with 50% grey ticked. Darken the BG and lightened the flower, just a tad.

See my mod. I have also cloned/painted the white areas.

I have also done a mod of #1.

With these shots, it is well worth studying the BG, making sure it is not too busy

Nice capture. Have done a mod with a tighter crop.

Also

Darkened the BG and clone out distractions

I like the effect in the lower half but I find the large area of sky overpowering. You could think about trimming the top half off.

Beautiful shot. I have done a mod which I hope you like.

Lightened the image in Levels

Made a slight 'S' adjustment in curves.

Used the mid grey dropper to slightly reduce the yellowness

It is still a bit too red especially on the white areas of the face.

Go into Curves.

There are three boxes with droppers on them.
Click on the centre one (midgrey).

When you put the cursor onto the image, it will be replace by a little dropper.

Put the dropper over the greyish part of the picture (in the case the part of the eye around the pupil) and click.

This will improve this lovely image even more.

Quote: I agree with the background - but how do I get around that problem - I assume you clone it out, but how do you do that without affecting the bird?


Use a smallish brush with a soft edge opacity at 100% with the aligned box ticked. When going round the bird, enlarge the image and use a very small brush. Don't slide the brush along but dab it (by clicking the left button, move a tad then click again and so on). Just be careful about where you are cloning from.

Have a play. It will take a little practise but it will come.

Good detail on the bird. Have done a mod where I have done a different crop, cleaned up and darkened the BG. I did this quickly just to show you what can be done.

Hope you like it

Excellent detail. If it were mine, I would copy the highlight in the eye, onto the other eye

I prefer the colour version. I think the secret of this type of image is too keep it simple and not have too much in it. I think this image works well but is probably on the limit. Anymore may push it OTT.

Please keep at it. This is very original and eyecatching

Nice idea and worked well.

2 points to help you.

The lighting is wrong. The sun would appear to be behind the birds (given the silhouette at the bottom) but is shining on them from the front.

Not sure what the OOF thing is, bottom right and doesn't help the image.

The actual cutting of the birds is fine. Pretty good for a first attempt.

Hope this helps

3 excellent action shots. With #2 and #3, I would clone out the green blob, top right

Beautiful abstract pattern shot. I would clone out the white spot on the bottom edge.

Hi Derek - Thanks for your PM. This is what I did on the mod.

1. Opened up new layer and selected mode overlay and checking the 50% gray box.
2. You should be active on the top layer.
3. To lighten an area, you need to set the FG colour to white, to darken, set it to black.
4. We want to darken so set it to black and click on the brush tool
5. Set the brush size as appropriate and set opacity to about 30%
6. If the FG colour is black than the higher the opacity, the darker you make the area you paint. With the FG colour set to white, the higher the opacity, the lighter the area painted.
7. Paint over the light area and you will see it darken. You can undo if necessary and try a different opacity.
8. Once you are happy, flatten the layers
9. I am not sure how much you know a bout PS, so if you need any further explanation then PM me.
10. The best way to learn is to have a play, trying the different options.
11. Using layers does not destroy the image (until you flatten it). Some people save the unflattened image, in case they need to do further changes.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

John

Here is some more information, hopefully, you will find of use.

Layers

This I find I use most of all in layers.

Select Layers - New - Layer
Using the mode dropdown select overlay
Then tick the Fill overlay-neutral colour box

This will give you a new layer.

Towards the bottom of the tools bar there are 2 large boxes with a small replica set to black and white.

Click on this to set the large boxes to black/white. The top box is the foreground colour and the bottom box is the background colour. To the right of these boxes is a line with two arrow heads. This flips flops the two boxes between FG and BG.

When you want to darken an area, set the FG box to black. To lighten, set the FG box to white.

Click on the brush tool and set the brush size to a size a bit smaller than the area you want to change. There will be a box on the tool bar called opacity. This controls the amount of darkening/lightening. Set this to about 25% to start off with. If you want to darken an area then set the FG to black and run the brush over the area that needs darkening. Change the brush size as required. To lighten areas, change the foreground colour to white and brush over the necessary areas.

If you mess it up, go into the window dropdown (in PS), click on the layers option. Go into the new layers window and move the layer into the dustbin.

Once you are happy with the change, click on the layers option, from the tool bar, then click on flatten image.

In curves, I click on the centre of the diagonal line to fix it. Then I go up the line to where it meets the next set of dotted lines. Where they cross, I click just above them (only a tad). Similarly, I go down the diagonal line, from the centre to where the lower dotted lines cross and click just below them. to make an 'S'. To lighten the image make an inverted 'S'. You will need to experiment but it is only a small adjustment. I hope this makes sense.

This may sound very complicated but if you follow these instructions as a play in PS, I hope it will make sense.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are still having problems.

In case anyone is interested in what I suggested to Pamela about the mod, here is the PM I sent her.

I am glad you liked my mod. I will try to explain what I did but find it difficult without showing it so here goes. I use Photoshop 7 but do not know PSPX1 or Elements.

Levels adjustment - in Elements the Shortcut to get to the levels screen is CTRL + L.
This is something I check out with all my images. The LH fader should be moved to the LH side of the graph and the RH fader to the RH side of the graph. This usually brings about a noticable improvement.

In curves, I click on the centre of the diagonal line to fix it. Then I go up the line to where it meets the next set of dotted lines. Where they cross, I click just above them (only a tad). Similarly, I go down the diagonal line, from the centre to where the lower dotted lines cross and click just below them. to make an 'S'. To lighten the image make an inverted 'S'. You will need to experiment but it is only a small adjustment. I hope this makes sense.

To darken the image I used layers, which is not available in elements. You could try using the paint brush, set to black, with a low opacity, say 7%.

I hope this is clear. It isn't very difficult to do but very difficult to try a put it into words.

Nice image but could be improved, in my opinion, with a few tweaks in photoshop.

1. In levels, move the LH fader to the base of the graph. This gives a better rendering.
2. Straighten the horizon. To do this, select the measure tool (right click on the eyedropper icon). Draw a line along the horizon. Then select rotate canvas - arbitrary and click OK
3. Crop the image to just above the lighthouse.

This might sound complicated but it isn't once you have done it.

I hope this is of help to you.

Nicely done but here are 2 suggestions

1. Crop off most of the sky. It doesn't add anything to the picture.
2. Use the levels adjustment to lift the image a tad.

Hope this helps

Well caught with lovely droplets. The image is a bit flat and needs a slight adjustment in PS.

Go to levels and move the RH fader to the edge of the graph. Do the same to the LH fader but move it to the right, just past the start of the graph. See if you like the difference. Also crop the OOF part of the water and a tad off the RH side of the picture to give a stronger composition. Hope this helps.