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My “Recipe” – Digital Processing of Bird Photos (from RAW)

This morning I had a nice short excursion to try to grab some photos of migrating sparrows. It was just an hour, but I managed to photograph 6 species, and got some photos in nice early morning light. As I start to process those photos, I thought I’d share my “typical” recipe for processing photos from RAW from my Canon 90D, something I always wanted to blog about.

I don’t do a huge amount of digital processing. I try to use the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) mantra, and keep the habitat and bird as I saw it. I’m trying to show the whole flow for a typical photo, and while the steps below may look daunting, processing from RAW to a final TIF for long-term digital archiving is typically just a couple of minutes for me. That involves two software packages: Adobe Photoshop (and plugins), and Topaz DeNoise AI. A very good example of a typical processing flow follows here, for a Harris’s Sparrow I photographed this morning on top of a fence post.

Open and evaluate the photo in Adobe Camera Raw. Here’s the original photograph straight from my 90D, as it appears when I first open it in Adobe Camera Raw. Note that as is often the case when you’re shooting birds, there’s a lot of “empty” space. You often try to “fill the frame” with the bird to get maximum detail, but birds don’t often cooperate! Thankfully with today’s DSLRs, there are plenty of pixels where you can crop some of the frame, and still have sufficient detail for large-size prints. I’ll eventually crop, but for now my main focus is on the overall exposure.

Example - Adobe Camera Raw screen
Original photo, straight from my Canon 90D, and what it looks like when I open in Camera RAW.

Correcting for exposure: The first thing I notice in the photo is that it’s overexposed in the whites on the underside of the sparrow, and a bit too bright for the scene overall. Not an uncommon situation, as in this case, the sparrow popped up on the fence post for just a second, and I quickly grabbed a photo with a lot of time to change camera settings. If you don’t like to deal with the hassle of shooting RAW and shoot in JPG, you’re already in trouble, as that exposure is baked in and you don’t have nearly as much flexibility in saving that detail in the whites. However, in RAW, you can adjust that exposure before converting to your long term archive format (TIF for me).

Below is a zoom of the bird as I correct exposure in Camera Raw. It can often be done simply in the “Basic” tab, with slider bars where you can correct exposure, contrast, and other elements. Here I’ve simply made three quick changes to lower exposure overall and bring out some detail in those whites (with all other settings shown on the right representing default values for this shot):

  • Drop exposure overall for the whole scene by -0.40
  • Change the “highlights” setting to -80. This lowers overall exposure only for the brightest parts of the scene, a very useful feature in this situation when I want lower exposure in the whites.
  • “Dehaze” increased by +10. Dehaze is described as basically compensating for light scatter in the atmosphere. It’s a strong tool that really is wonderful in providing increased clarity to an image when shooting in hazy conditions, but overall it does a nice job in deepening contrast. Here just a touch of an increase results in some darker background tones and darker tones on the bird, giving the image more “pop”.

Note the end result of this basic adjustment on the bottom, with whites on both the fence post and bird showing much more detail, and a less starkly bright exposure overall. There are other tools in Camera RAW you can also use for exposure adjustment and the like, with Curves being the other tool I often use.

Before and after - Changing exposure settings in Adobe Camera RAW
Before and after applying exposure and other corrections prior to RAW conversion

Other settings for RAW conversion: For this photo there’s not much else I want to do before converting from RAW to TIF. Note the “Detail” tab. I set everything to 0, as I don’t want Camera RAW applying sharpening or noise reduction, as I don’t think it does nearly as good a job as Topaz DeNoise AI (coming step). Also note the “Optics” tab. I always make sure I check the box for “remove chromatic aberration”. It’s not going to make much of a difference for this image, but for an image such as a bird in flight against a bright blue sky, it corrects for the “color fringing” that can sometimes occur. This is very lens dependent, and my primary birding lens (Canon 100-400mm II) has a fluorite and other elements that help minimize chromatic aberration. Still, it is sometimes noticeable a the fringe of a very high contrast area as a pixel or two coloring, and this setting helps correct.

Camera RAW provides a specific correction for the lens you’re using, as it does for “profile corrections”, another box I always check. This corrects for distortion and vignetting. Neither are huge issues with the Canon 100-400, but there are other lenses I have where use of this setting has been quite helpful for correcting vignetting (a shadowing around the corners or edges of a photo).

That’s it! White balance overall looks pretty good on this photo, but correcting for color imbalances is about the only other correction I typically handle in the RAW conversion stage. If white balance is off and there’s an odd color cast to a photo, there are ample tools in Camera RAW for correcting, from basic changes in color “temperature” and “tint”, to more specific corrections. Now I’m ready to convert to TIF…

Basic adjustments in Adobe Camera RAW
Settings for both “detail” and “optics” in Adobe Camera Raw

Conversion to TIF: There’s not much to this step. There’s a “down” arrow in the upper right of Camera RAW that opens up the conversion to TIF (or other format). I use TIF for long-term archiving of a photo as it’s a “lossless” form of photo storage, as opposed to JPEG. JPEG provides a smaller file, but at the cost of image quality. To be honest, it’s virtually impossible to visually distinguish between the highest-quality settings JPEGs, and a TIF. You do have peace of mind with a TIF though in that your photo will always be saved at the highest quality, while each new save of a JPEG may cause an additional small loss of information.

Settings are below…not much to it! The only other thing to really consider is colorspace for your output. That’s a topic for another blog post. Take my word for it and just choose SRGB, and go ahead and convert.

The result here…a beautiful, “lossless” TIF file with 6960 x 4640 pixels that’s corrected for exposure, chromatic aberration, and vignetting.

Converting from RAW to TIF in Adobe Camera RAW
Screen in Adobe Camera RAW for conversion to TIF

Noise Removal: This photo was shot in pretty early morning light, and I used ISO 1000 to ensure enough shutter speed to get a sharp photo. Shooting at as low an ISO as possible is always a good idea to reduce noise, but thankfully there are some wonderful tools for correcting noise in an image. For the last year or so I’ve been doing it with Topaz DeNoise AI, simply…awesome…software that I use for both noise correction and sharpening.

In the zoomed out photos above, it’s hard to see much of the noise, but for “pixel peepers” like myself, I’m not fond of the noise you see when viewing an image at full resolution. Remember when converting from Camera RAW, I didn’t do any correction for noise, so my converted TIF right now is showing all the noisy warts from the sensor on my Camera 90D. Next thing I do is load the TIF into Topaz DeNoise AI.

Topaz will both remove noise and sharpen the image. When you load the image in Topaz DeNoise AI, it will select default “remove noise” and “enhance sharpness” settings, based on its own evaluation of your photo. To show you the effects of each in turn, first here are default settings from Topaz DeNoise AI in reducing noise for this photo. Note the background color around the bird and the dramatic improvement in noise (image immediately below). Also note the eye itself, with the textured look in the original image, vs. the smooth, noise-free look in the corrected version.

I flipping love this software, but do realize it’s not everybody’s preference to dramatically reduce noise. Some people prefer some of that original “grain” in a photograph, which I think harkens back to the days of film photography where that grain was part of the image. I say bull-puckey to that! Noise in a digital camera is just that…noise…not a feature of the subject or environment you’re trying to photography. It’s a digital artifact. Reducing that noise provides a much cleaner image, with the smooth even tones that represent the reality around us. Particularly for a photo like this where the background is this wonderful smooth bokeh from the original photo, noise reduction makes for a much more gorgeous background.

The software is great, but beware getting TOO aggressive in trying to remove noise, as you will start to lose detail in areas where you don’t want that detail lost. If you get too aggressive in noise reduction in Topaz DeNoise AI, I’ve also noticed some smudgy edges that can result, as as the border between a bird and a background.

Noise Reduction in Topaz DeNoise AI
Noise reduction example in Topaz DeNoise AI

Sharpening: I also use Topaz DeNoise AI for basic sharpening of the full resolution imaging. Don’t expect miracles with any sharpening software. Garbage in = garbage out, and if you don’t have a good sharp image to begin with, a sharpening algorithm isn’t going to save the shot. However, it can give it that extra “crispness” that can really help bring it over the top.

I used to use Photoshop sharpening tools, but now find the default sharpening in Topaz DeNoise AI to be superior. It helps too at how easy and fast it is, in that I can both remove noise and sharpen an image simultaneously. The first image below shows the software screen itself, and how very simple the basic operation is. If you set it to ‘auto’ it evaluates your image and chooses the ‘correct’ level of noise reduction and sharpening. I always let the software calculate auto settings, and then it shows you a preview of the impact of those settings. Pretty simple…if you want to increase noise reduction from that default setting…simply slide the bar and get an instant preview of the impact. Same for sharpness. You can also play with “recovering original detail”, which “places back” detail that may be lost by the noise reduction, or you can specifically target color noise reduction. In this case, basic noise reduction and sharpness effects are damned good, and I didn’t change the settings. I will often play around with the settings though before saving a new output image.

The image at the bottom shows a before and after, for doing BOTH the noise reduction, and sharpening. For sharpening, it’s subtle, as the original image was quite sharp on it’s own. But you do see some more crispness in the feathering around and in front of the eye and elsewhere in the image.

Topaz DeNoise AI - Example of screen
What the Topaz DeNoise AI software looks like as you’re processing.
Before and after - Sharpening with Topaz DeNoise AI
Before and after processing through Topaz DeNoise AI, showing the improvement in sharpening in the crisper feathering on the bird.

Final step – Cropping to preference – That’s pretty much it for most photos! I do keep it simple. At this stage I still have all the extra space around the bird, so my final step before presentation online, or for a print, is to crop to a pleasing composition. I do typically keep the corrected TIF file though with all the original pixels, in case I want to reframe a photo later with a different presentation. Here’s the final output (compare to the top original photo above). Even with the cropping of all the empty space, thanks to the 32.5 MB sensor on the 90D, the photo has enough remaining pixels to retain a lot of detail, and provide 300 DPI prints up to 10×14 or more.

Note some additional processing steps I sometimes take are below.

Harris's Sparrow - Zonotrichia querula

Other” processing steps: This example with the Harris’s Sparrow is pretty typical, when I’m dealing with a pretty high-quality photo to begin with. Dependent upon the photo some other steps I sometimes take are:

  • Shadow/highlight adjustment – You can’t ask for much better lighting than the Harris’s Sparrow above, with warm, early morning, and even lighting and a bird that’s posed perpendicular to the light source (behind me as the photographer). That’s obviously often not the case! In harsh lighting situations or other cases where the result is a high-contrast image, sometimes deep shadows are a result, and you’d like to try to bring out some detail in those shadows. There are shadow/highlight tools in Photoshop that I’ll use in those situations. Note dependent upon the photo, trying to bring out detail in the shadows can end up simply bringing out the noise in those shadows. Again, garbage in = garbage out, and if there’s not detail in those shadows to begin with, you’re not going to magically pull it out in post-processing. The best time to try to try to pull out details from the shadows is during RAW conversion, analogous to what I did with this photo in trying to bring out detail in the (overexposed) whites.
  • Selective adjustments – Sometimes you don’t want a specific adjustment to impact the whole image, but just one part. In that case there are many tools in Photoshop that allow you to select specific parts of the image, and apply color adjustments, exposure, sharpness, noise, or other changes to only the selected area.
  • Cloning out unwanted elements – I try to keep my photos as close to the original scene as possible, and that means inclusion of habitat elements if they were in the shot at the time. However, Photoshop has tools that do make it quite easy to “get rid of” unwanted elements in an image. For example, in the final image above, it’s simply the sparrow on a post, with a perfectly “clean” background. What if there were a few blades of grass or an overhanging branch that intersected one corner of the photo (for example)? In that case, it is extremely easy to use the “clone” tool…selecting an area of the background nearby the unwanted feature, and effectively copying and brushing over the unwanted feature. You can often thus end up with that “perfect” background with the unwanted element removed. I try to keep my use of this to a minimum, for those really “special” images where I want that last bit of perfection before printing or selling.

That’s it!! – I’m not selling my typical “recipe” or toolset as the best answer for everyone. A bit part of your own personal workflow is 1) what software you have, 2) what you’re comfortable with, and 3) what effects you’re trying to achieve. The process above “works” for me as I’ve used it for countless thousands of photos, and I can whip through any one photo quite quickly. Your mileage may vary, but I hope the examples above are helpful.

Tree Nazis strike again in South Dakota

Tree cutting - South Dakota roadsides

Another one of my (former) favorite birding spots, hit by the South Dakota Tree Nazis. If they have their way, no habitat of any kind will be left in the state, and we’ll have a nice homogeneous landscape of corn and soybeans.

Sigh…this is getting old.  I went out this morning to do a bit of birding, and thought I’d try “Ditch Road” north of Sioux Falls.  It’s a spot I like to go to in the mornings.  Ditch road has a ditch that often holds water, with thick trees and shrubs on either side.  The stretch I like to bird is on the west side of the road, so there’s some nice light as I drive it in the morning.

As soon as I turned the corner on to Ditch Road, my heart fell.  Yet another of my favorite birding habitats in the area has fallen prey to the South Dakota Tree Nazis.  If you haven’t heard of the group, they’re an evil underground effort to ensure that all of South Dakota is homogeneous corn and soybeans, and that every little bit of remaining bird habitat is removed.  “Spook Road”, another favorite birding spot just east of my home town of Brandon, has also fallen prey to the Tree Nazis.

In both cases, thick shrubs and trees lining the road have been completely removed.  From the rumors I’ve heard, it’s local and county government efforts to satisfy new insurance requirements.  I’m not sure if it’s true, but I had heard that due to an accident involving someone becoming injured or killed in a vehicle strike on roadside woody vegetation, insurance companies pressured local governments to remove woody vegetation that’s anywhere close to a roadway.

Trees aren’t exactly widespread on the South Dakota plains.  Urban areas certainly have plenty of trees, but otherwise they are typically restricted to riparian areas and fencelines.  In the case of the aforementioned Spook Road, there’s about a 3 mile stretch where a small creek intermittently crosses the road, and it’s the thick riparian/roadside trees and shrubs that were removed.  In the case of Ditch Road, it truly is a very thin strip of tree and shrub habitat, perhaps 30 yards wide in total, but it’s always been a very productive birding location for me, particularly in spring when migrant passerines move through.

And now, like many of my other favorite birding locations, the Tree Nazis have destroyed it.  As the photo above shows, ALL vegetation on the side of the ditch closest to the road has been removed.  I guess I should be thankful the Tree Nazis were feeling gracious, and left the vegetation on the far side of the ditch. It’s a far too common site though in the area, with trees along fencelines, shelter belts, and other roadside trees being removed at an incredible rate.

The South Dakota Tree Nazis have many splinter groups operating in the state as well, including the South Dakota Wetland Destroyers who have been incredibly active in the last couple of years, drain-tiling and destroying every tiny remaining spot of wetland in the area.  For an area that historically was chock-full of little wetlands, I now have to drive a ways to find a functional wetland with any kind of decent birding.

I’ve got a LOT of photos on my main website that were taken on Ditch Road. After what I saw today, all of those photos may now just be a remembrance of a time when Ditch Road had decent birding, before the Tree Nazis did their work…

All life should be cherished. Except spiders.

Garden Spider

The biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my yard, what I believe is a common “Garden Spider”. Pretty. Also the stuff of nightmares.

A bit off topic, but…there was a spider in the sink this morning.  Just your average-sized, run-of-the-mill spider you find in your house from time to time.  If you should find yourself in this situation, here are the 4 steps you should take:

  1. Turn the water on high and flush the spider deeply down into the drain
  2. Turn on the garbage disposal.
  3. Turn the water on as hot as it can go and run it for a bit…just in case.
  4. Pouring flaming gasoline down the drain is optional, but recommended.

I’m a nature lover.  I’ll go FAR out of my way to avoid hitting any form of life while driving.  I’ll stop and help turtles cross the road.  If I’m walking I’ll try to avoid stepping on little buggy critters.

But I draw the line at spiders, inside my house!  I’m not sure what the visceral, horrifying reaction is people (often) have to spiders.  They’re not that big.  They’re not going to hurt you.  Many people (myself included) don’t have the same negative reaction when seeing a similarly sized insect.  Yet a spider sighting in the house is a cause for immediate action in my house.

F***ing, Fat, Fake Nature Lovin’ Campers – FFFNLCs

Vegetation removal at Big Sioux Rec Area - 2013 to 2015

Big Sioux Rec Area campground – 2 years ago, and today. All shrubs and trees anywhere close to the road removed, any remaining trees trimmed way up. Can’t have any scratches on those $125,000 RVs!!!

We live across the street from the Big Sioux Recreation Area, a state park here in South Dakota.  It’s a riparian area along the Big Sioux River, with many very large cottonwoods and burr oaks, among other trees.  We’ve lived in Brandon for over 20 years now, and I’ve always enjoyed the park, including the birds found within.  That enjoyment is becoming less and less as time goes by.

There’s a definite pecking order in terms of what passes for “recreation” in South Dakota.  Birds and birding, and wildlife in general, seems to be very far down that list.  “Parks and Rec” often seems to mean accommodating a few select recreational uses of public land.  Hunting definitely tops the list.  What else would you think when you get to your favorite  South Dakota State Park, and are immediately greeted with a sign that says “Warning – Hunting Season in Progress”?  Nothing says rest and relaxation more than walking a beautiful path, looking for birds, all the time with a wary eye for any trigger happy hunter that may be targeting something in your general vicinity.

Accommodating campers seems to be the second highest priority.  The Big Sioux Recreation Area has always had camping spots, but until recently, they’d been wonderfully vegetated.  There are two loops with camping spots, loops that USED to be lined with cedar trees and other vegetation.  They were wonderful for birding. The deciduous trees and shrubs around the camping sites themselves were sometimes spectacular for warblers and other migrants in the spring.  The thick cover offered by the cedars and surrounding bushes always attracted birds.  A few years ago on a beautiful November day, as my son and I walked through the park, we were surprised by 15 or more Long-eared Owls that were roosting in the evergreens.  They were incredibly tame, allowing close approach.  People came from all around the area to see this unique circumstance, a group of tame, easily seen Long-eared owls that had chosen the Big Sioux Rec Area camping loops as their winter roosting spot.

Long-eared Owl - Asio otus

From 2007, a Long-eared Owl perched in trees in the campground at the Big Sioux Recreation Area. Those trees and any other vegetation in the vicinity are GONE, largely to make way for today’s generation of Fat Fake Nature Lovin’ Campers.

Last summer, the park began removing trees and shrubs.  Ostensibly, part of the reason was due to what’s become an all out war on Eastern Red Cedar by parks in the state.  However, one of the directly stated reasons for the move?  All the increasingly large campers that use the Big Sioux Rec Area were having a difficult time backing into some of the camping spots.  Those cedar trees that held all the Long-eared Owls?  They are ALL gone.  All the bushes and other vegetation that used to line the roads of the camping loops?  Gone.  What was once a wonderful habitat for birds is now a habitat for…FFNLCs.

What is a FFNLC, you ask? My very blunt term for “Fat Fake Nature Lovin’ Campers”.  Frankly, I usually put another “F” in front of the term, and you can imagine what that stands for.  DEFINITE “Fake nature lovers”, given what passes for “camping” at the Big Sioux Recreation Area.  Last night, I was walking through the park and passed a MASSIVE RV that has been parked in the same spot all week. Despite being there for several days, I had yet to actually see someone OUTSIDE, until last night.  Last night, there was a definite FFNLC, “roughing it” in the park.  This FFNLC was massive on a grand scale, just as was her RV!  And just as massive was the huge flatscreen TV she watching in the “wild” of the park.  The RV had a panel on the outside that opened to reveal this massive flatscreen TV. This FFNLC was sitting in a lawn chair with a huge bowl of chips(?), munching away with the volume turned ALL the way up so the rest of the park could also enjoy her viewing of American Idol.

NOTHING says “Nature” more than sitting in a lawn chair, with your satellite TV hooked up, watching a giant screen and speakers belting out American Idol.  And now you see why I usually add another “F” in front of FFNLC.  Even if there WERE a bird in the general vicinity of the VERY fat FFNLC, there’s no way I could have heard it over her TV.

Fox Sparrow photo - Big Sioux Rec Area

Fox Sparrow, taken in the campground loop at Big Sioux Rec Area. Alas, this spruce tree, like EVERY spruce and cedar tree in that loop, is now gone.

I don’t want to be mean about the “fat” part of FFNLC, but…c’mon, it fits SO well for FFNLCs.  This weekend, on a GORGEOUS afternoon, I took a walk through the park with my pups.  There’s a nice, long, paved bike/walking trail through the park that we like to take the pups on.  Beautiful day…many campers at the park…gorgeous trail…and for the 1 1/2 mile walk, do you know how many people I came across on the trail?  ONE.  ONE!!!  But yet you got back to the campground area itself, and there were certainly plenty of FAT FFNLC’s “roughing” it.  “Roughing it” nowadays evidently means never moving more than 15 feet from the vicinity of your massive, air conditioned, satellite TV equipped, more-comfortable-than-most-peoples-houses, 40-foot RV.  TAKE A FREAKIN’ WALK, FFNLCs.  TRY TURNING OFF THE TV and actually enjoying the park itself.

There’s obviously no going back.  My very birdy camping loops are no more, and it’s not going to change.  EVERY change the State Parks make around here end up REMOVING habitat, and putting in MORE camping stalls.  I guess I should enjoy what habitat remains in the Big Sioux Recreation Area, because its inevitable that any bird habitat presently found there is only going to be reduced even further as time goes by.

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