Curiosity

I happened to look to the left of the path and there was this deer staring at me with such big beautiful eyes. It was surrounded by so much vegetation that I could not quite manage to make this a clear shot. I'll post the original photo below as Image 2 so you can see what I mean.

For the above image, Image 1, I used CS5 to prune specific interfering plants in the image. I then split the image into two parts: deer and bg. I found it necessary to use Remask 3 to accomplish the selection of the deer. I then used Painter 12 on each part with some help from CS5 to adjust contrast and exposure as well as retouching. I applied a light sandy pastel paper texture too.

In addition to providing a clearer view of the deer, I tried to make the look of the animal less contrasty and the vegetation less attention getting.

I came very close to retaining the photographed processed image of the deer alone without modification by Painter 12 with only the bg modified. I'll post that below too as Image 3. I really like the detail in the photographic image.

I was surprised to see the high ISO of this image and traced it to a recent change that I made in one of the software switches in the 1D Mark IV (C.Fn I-8: Safety shift (iso)). The camera decided that correct autoexposure could not be obtained without increasing ISO to 4000. That's too much for me: I've now disabled the switch. I decided not to apply NR to this image since it was to be used for Photo Art. However, noise is really only apparent in the bg anyway.

All comments most welcome.

1D Mark IV, 400 mm f/5.6, 1.4x TC, hand held: ISO 4000, 1/1000 s, f/9, 0 EV, 9.8 MP (61% of 16 MP full frame), exposure adjustment, sharpening.