When I saw this Eastern King bird I knew I wanted to make him pop against the tall grasses once I uploaded the file. I was so lucky that I ended up with him as sharp as I did because the wind was whipping quite a bit that day.
First things first
As with all of my images, the first thing I do is check for dust spots and crop to the composition I want. Typically I compose in camera but he was a bit far away and cropping just made the image better.
Making the bird pop
I’m loving the updated masking tools in Lightroom Classic. They make it much easier to mask and do selective editing.
Here’s what I did to make him pop:
1. Select subject
2. Invert mask
3. Lowered the texture
4. Lowered the clarity
5. Lowered the highlights
6. Added a bit more black
Making these adjustments made the background appear less busy. It also softened it so that the bird stood out more against it.
Then I added a second mask:
1. Select subject
2. Increased texture to +50
That is it. In this case, the exposure was pretty spot on. The sun was shining perfectly on the bird which helped.
Here’s the final image, before and after:
Interesting, I haven’t done a lot with the masking in Lightroom but will give this a try.
The new masking tools make it much easier than it used to be and you can get much more specific. It does a great job of selecting the sky as well.
I am a little confused! I couldn’t see the bird in the comparison photos on my screen!
Hi Marland – did you use the slider? If you click on the line with 2 arrows and pull it to the left and right, you’ll see the before and after.