New Life- Repost

Well, after a bit of experimentation through some helpful tips from Mike Smith and Mark Davies, I have finally come up with this edited version of a previous upload. Hope you think this is an improvement on the last one? Apologies for posting here a second time, but I thought it would be missed on the original as I took so long to get around to re-doing it!

Best wishes and thanks to all....

Fran

Hi Fran, I think this one looks better. I compared them and the first one looks pale compared to this one. The colors are better in this one.

looked to lacking a bit of blue saturation, the changes made are subtle - I've equalised the dark grey in one of fledgling eyes from 48:46:51 to 42:42:42 by moving the grey mid point sliders - the histogram is already clipped in all channels - the grey in the bark looks a bit more natural and the orange in the wood is emphasised. Finally a contrast sharpening pass of 20%:30r:2t gives a bit of "zing". The changes are minor but help to reduce the flat light feel

Mike

Much appreciated Mike, I have been struggling with this one for a little while now, but your touch has improved it even more. Many thanks.

Fran

Very nice capture Fran, the repost is a much improved, though the colours in Mike's version look more accurate.

Andy...

Lovely photo, well done

Fran

No worries, this is a pretty unique image and deserves getting the last ounce out of it to make a great wall print. I always start my colour balance by RGB equalising the darkest element (usually the eye pupil), black is black no matter what the lighting conditions. That usually sorts out 95% of colour balance issues.

Great effort Fran and a vast improvement over the original .Photoshop wont make a silk purse ...but can certainly improve an already good image .Mike's correct the colours in the original in RGB where all clipped , not much but clipped .The multiply layer I suggested dropped to about 60% opacity will help here minimising the clipping .Mikes got to the same point as me with the clipping . I added another mid grey and below layer ( Ctrl, alt ,shft,tild> release> control j ) and this time changing the blend mode to screen and reduced opacity to 40% merge down .Duplicate layer finished with a USM at 30, 1.5 , 3
Full work was duplicate layer
C,A ,Shift , ~ ,release
Control j
BM change multiply ,opacity change 60%
Merge down
C,A,S,~,release
Ctrl j
Bm change screen,opacity change 40%
Merge down
Duplicate layer USM 30,1.5,3 or you could use the high pass method.
Nice to see this again .
Will pm Mike on his method . I wanna know too.
Mark

Forgot to add my version.

This has been a big learning curve for me, so thanks guys, you have all been very helpful, which is why I joined this forum! A much improved image!

Fran