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Tawny Frogmouth who made friends with my class of ten year olds.... C and C welcome (bearing in mind I took this surrounded by 30 excited kids!!)

nice shot, a bit dark, you lose the frogmouth a bit in the background, but a great shot!!

Thanks Apart from a bit of sharpening, this is straight out the camera... any suggestions on how I can improve the shot in Photoshop?

if you still have it on you camera give d-lighting in camera a go. Otherwise have a play with the curves in photoshop. I generally use Capture NX2 so I will tweak the d-lighting adjustment and the curves.

I agree about it being dark. d-lighting in CaptureNX would help. I don't know Photoshop at all, but in Lightroom I would increase "Fill Light" which appears to have the same effect as d-lighting.

HI Try Levels in PS --adjust both sliders to the edge of the histogram and then a small amount to the left with the centre slider.Remember to make a copy layer first--cheers In Motion

I would selectively sharpen after doing the curves with a mask... you will have a bit of a job seperating the beast from the background...

As well as the above, the bright white elements in the background are a bit distracting. This is probably asking altogether too much ... however in theory I think you could sample the grey parts of them to fill a blank layer and use "blend if" options to fill the white parts with that grey. Then you'd probably need to fade it back a bit and probably use a mask to make sure the effect was restricted to just that area.

Well, you did ask.

Regards,
Murray

Thanks for the suggestions everyone I will have a play with the photo and post it when I think I have improved it. Luckily, my class think it is cool, and are happy with this version, so Im not under time constraints to do it!!

Dumb question time: whats a copy layer in PS?

Cheers and thanks again

Cathy

When you start working on an image in PS, you start with one layer which is the background layer. He's just saying to copy that layer first and work on the copy so you can always go back to the original data.

Regards,
Murray

tweak the d-lighting adjustment and the curves

just quickly, I hope you don't mind, but sometimes an example can be better . This brings out the beautiful eyes...

Great work Gerry! That is amazing!You really have mastered Capture NX., maybe I should send you a few photos to fix for me.

maybe I should send you a few photos to fix for me.

anytime mate, sometimes all it needs is another set of eyes over it, I find I will look at a set of images for an hour one day then come back a week later and redo them and go 'why did I not do that in the first place'. Also getting someone who has nothing to do with photography to just glance over them makes a world of difference too! however i am waffling....

Regarding the PP i did, which i neglected to list, was simply high quality d-lighting, contrast adjustment and a spot adjustment to the brightness levels above the owls head.

Wow, did I take that photo? Thank you so much, those tweaks look awesome and now I will try and replicate.. I'm learning and this forum is the best place to do that!

Cheers

Cathy

Wow, did I take that photo?

yep, and its a fine one!

any Q's...just ask