Scarlet Tanager Posing (Dry Brush Filter)

I realize that this has become the story of my blog, but... as I was going through my older pictures, I found another very nice image of a Scarlet Tanager. I like the bird's pose (here on my clothesline post) and the detail that I can see in its eye. Thanks for stopping by!

American Goldfinch on a Pole

Here's another picture of the goldfinch from yesterday's post. Here, the bird was taking a break from dipping into the jelly/sugar water in my feeder. Thanks for stopping by!

American Goldfinch on the Clothesline (Paint Daubs Filter)

The American Goldfinch is one of my favorite birds. I don't see them very often, but when I do, its yellow color usually stands out against the background. I tried setting out a thistle sock this year to see if I might attract more of them to my yard, but since I set it up -- I've had no luck. Thanks for stopping by!

Female Oriole with Jelly in her Beak (Dry Brush Filter)

This is probably not the most patriotically appropriate post for the Fourth of July. It's not red, white, and blue. It doesn't have a flag, or anything relating to the American Declaration of Independence. Perhaps, the closest tie in to the Fourth of July that I can come up with is the Freedom of Speech, adopted as the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791. Because of the Bill of Rights in the U. S. Constitution, which you can trace back to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, I can post a picture of an oriole (sorry, didn't have a bald eagle) with jelly in its mouth on Independence Day. Happy Independence Day everyone! Thanks for stopping by!

Female House Finch on the Feeder (Dry Brush Filter)

In between when the orioles stop at our bird feeder, we get house finches that stop by to take the jelly. (At least, we did a while ago when the birds were still coming to our jelly feeder.) Thanks for stopping by!

Male Oriole at the Feeder (Dry Brush Filter)*

Yesterday, I posted about the order in which I sent my image file through the various programs that I use for post-processing. In today's post, I have some images to compare as I processed them in different orders through my programs.

The first image is the version that I cropped in Paintshop Pro.

I took the above cropped image (as a TIF file) over to Photoshop Elements and applied the Dry Brush filter (and a quick fix edit), for the following image. To my eye, the edits here helped to take some of the 'dullness' out of the previous picture.

Finally, I processed the above image in Photomatix, which helped to make the bird's eye stand out.

For kicks, I also processed the cropped image in Photomatix without the Photoshop's Dry Brush filter:

I like the Dry Brush filter at least in part because it sometimes helps to smooth out some of the noise in the picture. (I also like it when I can get a picture to look like a painting. Again, personal preference.) The image above looks a little bit cleaner than the one previous that included the Dry Brush filter.

Thanks for stopping by!

Scarlet Tanager in a Tree (Dry Brush Filter)

Normally, when I process my photos, Photomatix is the first place I take my raw image file. Then, I take the resulting TIF file over to Paintshop Pro for crop/straighten (and other edits), and then to Photoshop Elements for some sort of filter application. For this picture (and a few others as of late), I brought the image file back to Photomatix last in the process.

Something I am beginning to learn to watch out for is the purple fringe that you sometimes get with the HDR processing. Paintshop has an edit to automatically take the purple fringe out, but this edit doesn't always leave you with a clean edge (sometimes leaving behind the non-purple elements of the fringe.) Photomatix does have an option at the end of the process that you can tone-down colors that you don't want (to get rid of the fringe on this image, I had to take out the purple, blue, and magenta); however, you have to make sure that you don't want those colors elsewhere in the photo!

Thanks for stopping by!