Killdeer

[JayinMN]

I have always liked these birds for some reason, I guess because we always had them in our backyard when I was growing up. I was at my friends house and out in the horse pasture there were three running around making a ruckus. Appeared to be two males and a female. If I would have been paying attention I could have got some awesome shots but was turned around telling my dog to stay behind me. I heard something zipping through the air and a thud, I turned around to see the 3 killdeer scattering and a hawk sitting on the ground. It took off before I got any shots. Here is some of what I did get though. I am loosing so much detail when I edit my pictures. Any suggestions? I used photostudio 5.5 which came with my camera and I think its junk. What is a better program?

Who knew birds give piggy back rides too.

[Steve Foss]

Jay, Photoshop is the best around. But it's expensive. Photoshop Elements is a more stripped-down version of Photoshop that will do all you really need it to, and is far less expensive.

However, if you're shooting in jpeg mode, the software that came with your camera is plenty OK for posting images on the Web. It's less about which program you use than how you use it.

For example, are you bumping up contrast? The whites in this killdeer are totally blown out. I don't mean they're bad images, because they're not. They're very good. But if the whites are not blown out in the original captures and you're bumping contrast in post processing, that will blow them out. That's one example of how NOT to pp.

Maybe that's what you mean when you say you're losing detail in post processing. If not, can you be more specific about which actions you take before posting to the Web here, and about what detail you feel you're losing?

Now, if the whites are blown out in the original capture and not forced that way in pp, see if your camera allows exposure compensation or has a manual mode. With EC, I'd underexpose 1 full stop in these sunny-day images, which will preserve data in the whites and not produce too much noise in the darker areas. If no EC on your camera but manual mode is present, you can do the same thing that way.

To help you out if you'd like, please e-mail me one of the original captures, unedited, that you've posted here. Preferably the first image, since those whites are the most blown. My e-mail is below in my sig.

[JayinMN]

Steve I am losing sharpness and color to the pictures when I down size them to upgradable size for village photos. Unfortanetly about the only thing I can do is autoenhancement which is blowing the whites out tremendously. I am going to get photoshop. I see wal-mart has an edition, probably not the best but affordable. I will try to send you an original, but I am on dial up so that could take a long time. I might just wait till I go to my brothers house he has a faster connection. Thank for your help.

[Steve Foss]

Ahh, I understand.

If you can manage to pick up a version of Photoshop Elements, it'll be all you need and will give you great control over each individual setting you want to change.

Depending on the program, those "autoenhance" features can kill a photo dead and stick a knife in it.

[JayinMN]

I played around some more with a free program, professor franklin. Its a bit better.

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