{"id":122172,"date":"2022-10-20T06:34:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T12:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=122172"},"modified":"2022-10-20T09:53:49","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T15:53:49","slug":"red-winged-blackbird-upside-down-on-a-sunflower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/20\/red-winged-blackbird-upside-down-on-a-sunflower\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-winged Blackbird Upside Down On A Sunflower"},"content":{"rendered":"

One way to prevent\/reduce sharpening halos during processing.<\/p>\n

Warning – today’s post is unusually heavy on “photogeek” so it won’t be for everyone.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Two days ago I spent some time photographing Red-winged Blackbirds feeding on sunflowers near Farmington Bay WMA. The sunflowers were past their prime and somewhat sun-bleached and of course the blackbirds were… well, mostly black, so most of my photos were high contrast, resulting in very difficult exposures.<\/p>\n

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But I thought this one had potential.<\/p>\n

This is an unprocessed version of the image – at this point all I’ve done to it is crop and resize the photo. As is, I don’t like the photo much because for my tastes some of the blacks of the bird are too dark with little detail, the highlights are too bright (especially the sunflower head) and the bird could use some sharpening (virtually all photos taken in RAW need at least some sharpening).<\/p>\n

With many photos those adjustments can be made quickly and globally (globally = applied to the entire image) without any problems but in a high-contrast image like this one, sharpening globally and even using the Shadows\/Highlights Tool can cause distracting halos to appear at sharp, high-contrast edges.<\/p>\n

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In this version of the image I’ve sharpened the photo and increased exposure in the blacks and decreased exposure of the highlights using the Shadows\/Highlights Tool in Photoshop – all adjustments done globally.<\/p>\n

However, an annoying and distracting sharpening halo has appeared, especially at the wingtips because the wingtips are so high contrast against the very bright stem behind them. If you look carefully (it’s fairly subtle and probably harder to see on small screens, especially phones) you’ll see the halo as a narrow and very bright edge along some of the margins of the wingtips. When I spot an obvious halo in one of my photos I find it so distracting it detracts from my appreciation of the image, no matter how good it might otherwise be.<\/p>\n

There’s more than one way to prevent or reduce sharpening halos but as far as I know they all involve extra work during processing. Here’s the method I use.<\/p>\n

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I build a carefully constructed sharpening mask around the bird only, so that sharpening (and in this case the effects of the Shadows\/Highlights Tool) are applied selectively to the bird only. Here the mask can be seen as what some folks call “marching ants” around the edges of the bird. In Photoshop the “ants” are actually moving so they’re more easily seen, but here they’re static.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s the final version of the photo. The bird has been sharpened, there’s more detail in some of the blacks, the highlights aren’t quite so bright and most importantly – that annoying halo at the wingtips is drastically reduced to the point of not being an issue. Now I can enjoy the image for what it is, rather than being distracted by that damn halo.<\/p>\n

Yeah, it’s a busy setting but I like the behavior, his upside-down posture and I think his twisted tail is… cute.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: I’m far from an expert on processing in Photoshop and as I said earlier, there are other methods of preventing or reducing sharpening halos. Some of them may be better than this one but it’s the one I use when I need to.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One way to prevent\/reduce sharpening halos during processing. (4 versions of the same image)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,2782,390],"tags":[1936,1008,3487,6590,1032,6589,264,4551,2943,1686,311],"class_list":["post-122172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-red-winged-blackbirds","tag-agelaius-phoeniceus","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-image-processing","tag-marching-ants","tag-photoshop","tag-preventing-sharpening-halos","tag-red-winged-blackbird","tag-shadows-highlights-tool","tag-sharpening-mask","tag-sunflowers","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/red-winged-blackbird-0705-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-vMw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122172"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122225,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122172\/revisions\/122225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}