"Whooo!" not "Whooom!"

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 28-200 @ 170mm, F/5.6
1/160 sec
Built-in flash

I promise this is the last of my 'Animals'.

Camera-mounted flash produced all kinds of red-eye problems, so I did the dirty deed with that Adobe software. Cropping, and shrinking aside, I also took Richard's earlier tip to boost the colours, just to see what would happen.

Off-camera flash might have been the way forward, but I didn't have the kit with me. It was a day trip to a theme park, falconry centre and petting zoo. The birds of prey were not part of the latter.

Actually, when zoomed into the original the detail isn't particularly sharp. I'm hoping that by reducing the resolution in an 800x600 no-one will notice.

Photoshop trick

Hi All,

Nice simple trick to give your photos a bit of punch.

They say with divers, there are two sorts of divers, those that pee in there wet suits and those that lie about it. Photoshop and Photographers is the same so this tip is for all those that lie ;-)

Orignal

1- Duplicate the background layer.
2- Set blending mode to soft light.
3- Adjust the opacity as you like (about 50% is a good start).

After Post

Nice subtle way to boost the saturation and tonal range.
You almost have to look hard for the difference, its more of an impression, however check out the gray and the texture of the steps. (If need be right click and save the cropped shots to your desk top and flick between.)

There is no other adjustment between these two photos, NO levels, NO curves, NO dodge/burn.

For those who have a lot of photos to work with it's a very quick step and can even be added into your default actions.

The blending modes in photoshop are very clever and worth playing with. Soft light as here mutiplies light tones and dark tones together from the different layers to subtly lighten the lights and darken the darks.

p.s. This photo is not finished, jsut used like this for ilustration.

Coments, critique, abuse and questions welcome.

Cheers,
Richard B.