I thought this was one of the funniest images I have taken at the St. This beautiful snowy egret looks like he is having a great time showing off in front of the large group of photographers trying to get him centered in the cameras. For this image, changed Medium Contrast to 0.70, set all Hues to 0, and changed these Lum settings to: Orange 0.39 and Yellow -0.87. Here are the basic Clarity settings used for my SJ Scottish Landscape: Clarity Section – Dynamics: Micro Contrast 0.73, Low Contrast 0.33, Medium Contrast 0 and High Contrast -0.34 Tone: Black Level 0.69, Midtones 0.02, and White Level -0.34 Hue/Sat/Lum Section – Hue Red 0.13, Orange 0.11, Green 0.33, and Aqua -0.36 Sat Red 0.19, Orange 0.14, Green -0.31, and Blue -0.19 and Lum Red 0.59, Orange 0.16, Yellow -0.02, and Green -0.37 all not listed colors were set to 0. I just love the expression of this lovely lady….Digital Lady Syd Finished up with Nik Viveza 2 to add a little vignette and drive focus to the bird’s eye. (See my How to Use a Red Channel to Create a Nice Blended Image Effect blog.) Then an orange Solid Color Fill Adjustment Layer was applied at 19% layer opacity to warm up the image slightly using the mask to remove areas that were too warm. A Red Channel Luminosity Curve Adjustment Layer was created. (See my How to Use Curves Adjustment Layers to Dodge and Burn an Image blog.) Areas that needed either adjustment were painted back. Darken and Lighten Curves Adjustment Layers were created and the layer masks were filled with black. (Need to try this preset if you shoot bird and wildlife photography – see her preset settings in her video In the Digital Studio January 6, 2017). (For Clarity settings, see below.) On another stamped layer Topaz Impression 2’s Jai Johnson’s Oil Glaze Light Original Color for noise removal preset was applied. On a stamped layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Clarity was applied to pull out the feather details more – the background was painted out in a layer mask. I could not believe how beautiful her eyes were! And where is her neck – how does she do this? The image had lots of shadows on her feathers that had to be removed – used both Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush set with the Saturation way down and clarity up to retain the feather structure, and then in Photoshop used a little cloning on the feathers. This beautiful Tricolored Heron is waiting for her mate to return to the nest with more nest ingredients. Obviously my image does not do justice to the actual beautiful piece created by the artist, but it was a joy to work on the image!….Digital Lady Syd Last step involved adding Topaz Detail 3 – just gave the overall image some sharpening and emphasized the background texture. 2 Lil’ Owls (see sidebar for website link) Color Bokeh Grunge Set – overlay 6 was set to Divide blend mode at 40% layer opacity to darken the edge of image. 4 Light Leaks were used on the edges – top and bottom set to a little dark red color, right side cyan and left side a warmish orange. A Spotlight Layer set to Overlay blend mode was used on the dragon head. Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Clarity was used on just the dragon. Nik Viveza 2 was used to adjust the color and tone throughout the image – this helped fix the glass reflection problem. A Darken/Lighten 50% gray layer was added. A Hue/Sat Adjustment Layer was clipped to the layer and set to a Cyan color. To get the interesting cyan texture on the right side, a grunge type object created in Corel Painter was placed behind the extracted dragon, set to Soft Light and 52% layer opacity. Then PS Select and Mask command was used to extract the dragon from the background. First the dragon was run through Lucis Pro (no longer available) to get the edges defined better – it does not really sharpen but gives a similar look. I thought that the dragon was singing into a microphone but he is actually eating a “Dragon Berry” ice cream cone! Need to check out all Nano’s work – it is amazing! I will give you a quick run down of what was done to the image, but many steps were involved to get an effect I liked. I shot this beauty through the front window in bright daylight so it took a lot of cleaning up to get rid of the reflections. Augustine where the James Coleman Gallery had it displayed- this piece is called Little Davian. I had never seen a Nano Lopez sculpture until my recent visit to St.
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