Photoshop Processing

Black-bellied Plover

Portrait

Birders trying to learn Photoshop may be interested in seeing the basic workflow I used to process this Plover photograph. Workflows may vary, and my own continues to evolve. I threw the portrait in for kicks.

Workflow

Camera Raw:

Crop Image

White Balance - As Shot

Set black point - 15

Set white point - (-.30)

Recovery - 10

Fill - 3

Brightness - 40

Contrast - 25

Clarity - 10

Vibrance - 5

Saturation - 5

Masking - 35

Luminesence - 25

Photoshop:

Proof colors for web

Levels adjustment

Exposure adjustment

Nik filter to reduce noise

Quick layer mask to apply background blur

Tonal adjustments (contrast, hue, and saturation)

Selective color adjustment to bring up blacks

Nik Sharpening filter (bird and foreground only)

Resize image

Nik filter to colorize image

Final sharpening using Nik filter

Final levels check

Save image for the web

While I have included some camera raw processing values here, your own workflow and processing values may be quite different from mine. Learning Photoshop is all about finding workflows that work for you. Processing time, about 20 minutes, using Photoshop 4 and third-party Nik filters.