Bringing out color and contrast - the Tree Swallow image

Anthony Medici was kind enough to send me a private message regarding my tree swallow image. I seemed to be having trouble with contrast and color, the image looked foggy? It printed quite well, but I couldn't present it on screen well. Anyway, Anthony suggested that remedies were available and that they may be of interest generally. Anthony, just a quick note to you. In my comparison with your version I noticed that the blues looked more purple and the greens and reds more yellow. Is this what you see? Thank you much for making this special effort. Hope this is of some interest to others. Question at large - is there a good way to deal with this that would benefit onlookers?

Paul

I tend to use actions developed by others. I think curves is what was needed to bring out the contrast of you tree swallow correctly. I'm not good with curves. I tend to work with levels, which are a simplified curves.

I did run a shadow recovery action on the image but that wouldn't have changed the colors. It would just lighten the shadow areas. I also increased the contrast using levels. I think the color change occurred because I used a Velvia action on it. (It's suppose to change the colors. )

The post with the image in question is here. Paul, if you like, I'll put my version in the original thread or link it here so that other can see the mess I made.

Paul - It looks to me like you have edited the image in the Adobe RGB colour space (a common 'working space' for Photoshop) and have posted it without converting to the sRGB colour space.

cheers,
Eric

Thank you both for giving me additional issues to look in to. Anthony, certainly you can add the image and/or link to my original thread. I'll make sure that I include that note to my images in the future.

Paul

I posted here. This is my attempt at making the presentation a little better.

I think the simplest way to remove the "fog" in this and other images is to use a technique called "local contrast enhancement". The technique is based on applying another round of sharpening using amount = small (typically 30-50); radius = large (typically 50) and threshold = 0. Try it.

Paul,

I hope you don't mind but I added my attempt to your original thread with the steps I took.

Alan

Thank you Alan, that certainly looks "sharper" overall.

Paul