Feather Detail

Pseudo HDR Gull

I have searched for a technique to enhance feather detail in white birds. I think I may have found one! Simply increasing contrast doesn’t work as that tends to muddy up the whites. I also tried copying the white areas to a new layer in Photoshop and using various layer modes with limited success. I found that using linear burn was best, but still didn’t give me quite what I wanted. The gull picture at left (click for a larger view) was one such image. I liked the position of the gull, but the whites of the feathers lacked detail and the picture fell flat. I knew the detail was contained in the RAW image, but how to pull it out?

Some time ago I purchased LucisArt and really hadn’t done much with it. I remember it wasn’t an inexpensive program, but the newer Lucis Pro is $595! However, I created a new layer from the original and applied the LucisArt plugin to it to increase the contrast. The plugin dramatically increased the feather detail without turning the whites into a muddy gray. I then reduced the opacity of this layer and used a layer mask to further blend it into the original to my liking – and voila! I finally achieved the look I was after!

I also began to wonder if I could do the same thing using Photomatix as a single RAW image (pseudo) HDR? I didn’t have time last night to try this, but that might work as well. I will attempt this and will post an update. Essentially, I plan to bring the original RAW image into Photomatix and process it so that it brings out the contrast in the bird’s feathers, ignoring the sky. I will then bring this image into Photshop and layer it with the original and then use masking and opacity to see if I can get a simliar result.

Please don’t hesitate to post your comments or techniques that you may have discovered to achieve the same or maybe even better results!