egret, wood duck, great horned owl.

[davev]

Work was slow so I left and went to a couple of parks near our house.
I had my D Reb with the Sigma 80-400 on board. Here are some of the
things I saw.


http://www.pbase.com/davev/image/43029541.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/davev/image/43029546.jpg

I used auto white balance, and this owl came out green looking in every pic
That's why I changed it to black and white.
I would have never seen this owl if not for the crows. There must have been
a dozen crows being very vocal toward this owl. I was looking up and couldn't
see anything until a dead branch broke under my foot. The owl took off with
the crows in tow. When he stopped in this tree, I was able to get some shots.
After about 20 minutes the crows quit squawking and the owl could relax again.

http://www.pbase.com/davev/image/43029548.jpg

[ginger_55]

I love the owl! How did the leaves get so light, PS, how?

The wood duck might be over sharpened, and I have never noticed over sharpening before. It is a great capture of the "bird" in a great place.
But I am being distracted, a bit, I think, by the sharpening. Maybe, what do I know? What do you think?

ginger (I still want to know about the PS and the owl, I want to try it)
I have never, so far (redundant), seen an owl in the wild.

[davev]

I love the owl! How did the leaves get so light, PS, how?

The wood duck might be over sharpened, and I have never noticed over sharpening before. It is a great capture of the "bird" in a great place.
But I am being distracted, a bit, I think, by the sharpening. Maybe, what do I know? What do you think?

ginger (I still want to know about the PS and the owl, I want to try it)
I have never, so far (redundant), seen an owl in the wild.
Hi Ginger.

If you can tell me how to do a screen capture in windows xt, I show you how
to do it. But to write it out will take all day. It not that many steps, just hard
to describe what to do.

dave.

[coldclimb]

That owl looks SERIOUS. Awesome shot! :D

As for screen captures, you should be able to hit the print screen button, and then go to your editing program and paste as a new document. :):

[davev]

I love the owl! How did the leaves get so light, PS, how?

The wood duck might be over sharpened, and I have never noticed over sharpening before. It is a great capture of the "bird" in a great place.
But I am being distracted, a bit, I think, by the sharpening. Maybe, what do I know? What do you think?

ginger (I still want to know about the PS and the owl, I want to try it)
I have never, so far (redundant), seen an owl in the wild.Here we go. I am going to assume that you know some of the basic functions
in PS.

1) Take a picture that you should just throw away and open it in PS Elements 2.

http://www.pbase.com/davev/image/43035686.jpg

2) Click on layers

http://www.pbase.com/davev/image/43035688.jpg

OK, here it gets tricky cause the screen capture program needs me to use
the mouse, so I couldn't really point things out as I went.

3) Click the ying/yang icon to get the Adjustment Layer menu.(1)
Then you'll click Gradient Map. (not shown) then the screen will look like this.
Then you will want to click the gradient shaded area (2)

http://www.pbase.com/davev/image/43035689.jpg

4) After you click the gradient area, you should get this window. Click the
black to white box and turn it from a neg. to a positive looking pic.

http://upload.pbase.com/image/43036351.jpg

5) Now if your picture is dark move this slider

http://upload.pbase.com/davev/image/43036442.jpg

6) At this point, I flatten the image. Then I click layers (there should be 1 layer at this point)
then the ying/yang or adjustment layer button, and from that menu click Gradient fill.
I'm doing this because the head of the owl is much darker than the rest of him.

http://upload.pbase.com/davev/image/43035692.jpg

7) As you can see, it's going the wrong way so I swing the little angle pointer
to the down position, and then click in the gradient area again.

http://upload.pbase.com/davev/image/43035693.jpg

8)Then once again, I move the slider around til I like what I see.

http://upload.pbase.com/davev/image/43035694.jpg

9) After I get what I want I click OK, then I flatten the image again.
At this point, I can do the brightness/contrast thing, unsharpen mask thing,
and resize.

http://upload.pbase.com/davev/image/43035695.jpg

All in all, it takes me about 5 minutes to do all this. It took me about 1 and
a half hours to demonstrate it. It would have taken all day for me to type it all out.

I hope this can help you and whoever else. I like to convert from color to B&W this way. (at least in elements 2).

dave.

[davev]

That owl looks SERIOUS. Awesome shot! :D

As for screen captures, you should be able to hit the print screen button, and then go to your editing program and paste as a new document. :):
I didn't understand at first what you were saying, so I downloaded a screen
cap. program. I can do it the way you explained it now. Sometimes I'm just a
little thick.

Thanks for the info.

dave.

[MuskyDude]

We're glad you skipped out on work! :thumb Nice shots!


AJ

[Kirwin]

Hi Dave,

Excellent work on the owl image!

[Harryb]

Hey Dave,


Excellent series of shots. Great post work on the owl. :clap
I had to laugh though becuase I've also have gone to B&W conversions when I screwed up the WB too.

Harry

[davev]

Hey Dave,


Excellent series of shots. Great post work on the owl. :clap
I had to laugh though becuase I've also have gone to B&W conversions when I screwed up the WB too.

Harry
Thanks everyone for your comments. I was out of town for a couple of days.

Ya know Harry, I've been screwing up to often lately. I've got to start thinking
about what I'm doing, before hand.

dave.