Squirrel and his nut

Crisp and clear. Good comp. It seems a bit on the cool side, evident in the grass and the fur.

I agree with Phil H that the colour balance seems a little on the cool side, but that is easily sorted and otherwise a good, sharp shot.

David

Hi, great sharpness but would expect that from your equipment, not sure on the POV were you laying down to shoot at eye level? if so perhaps more room at the bottom would give a better perspective.

Its a bit dark, a bit blue with perhaps a little too much contrast.

I sometimes use a Levels Adjustment layer to correct this kind of problem. Select the colour sampler tool (keyboard shortcut = I) and place a 3x3px or 5x5px sample on an area that should be neutral (i.e. white, black or some shade of grey between R = G = B, at least approximately). In this case I would place the colour sample marker on the white fur below the squirrel's forearm. The colour sample will appear in the Info Palette. Check which colour channel is dominating. In this case, the blue channel is going to have higher values than the red and the green.

To neutralize the color, open a Levels Adjustment layer. Click on the Channels dialogue box and select the Red Channel. Take the white point slider on the x-axis of the Levels histogram and move it a few points to the left and watch the Red channel value in the Info Palette. You are lookng to set the Red-channel value equal to the Blue-channel value.
Now select the green channel from the Channels dialogue box. Move its white point slider until the Green-channel value equals the Blue-channel value.

That removes and colour problems.

Set the Channel dialogue box back to RGB and move the central gamma-slider to the left to increase the image brightness, or you can do this with a Curves adjustment layer by raising the central portion of the RGB curve.

For printing, I would also probably crop it back to 3 x 2 format, removing some of the out-of-focus grass above the squirrel's head.

Nice one, Paul. I'll be starting my GS project next week, must get out there and do some acorn foraging

Andy...

Thanks everyone, I'll be calibrating my monitor tomorrow, I've had another d'oh moment.....

The shot was taken from a hide and a very quick compose and click to catch the squirrel before he scampered off, so the POV is a bit on the high side.

I'll do that Phil, I can see I have lots to learn about processing! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Andy, sounds like fun!

I've reprocessed the image again from the RAW file. I found that I could remove the blue cast by desaturating it in a hue/saturation adjustment layer. I boosted the brightness and reduced the contrast of the image as well. I then cropped it to a 3x2 format. I hope my processing adjustments are more suitable now, but please let me know.

Thanks,

Paul.