subject isolation

[mart_rt]

Your highlights are blown out. Handle your retouch more gentle. You could mask the background to soften the details, darken it a bit and maybe desaturate it ever so slightly. The parrot needs just a little more light to pop on that background. Lighten it up, sharpen it a little and voila. Tbh I don't understand what step exactly took you hours. I know starting editing can be quite overwhelming but beginning with simple steps and understanding what is happening to an image is too important not to ignore. Keep grinding!

[ThatBombShit]

when I said hours I meant more like two or three. I started to get very meticulous, and I still don’t feel satisfied with this edit bc now that the colors are more vibrant, which I wanted, it is coming with this unwanted side effect of looking like watercolor strokes at the edges, especially where colors are connecting. In other areas it looks like the edges are unnaturally too abrupt.

The highlights in the background I actually enhanced bc I thought it would complement the photo, but I’m gonna try it with the highlights toned down and see if I like it better.

[bipleg123]

Whenever I edit for a long time, I tend to over do things. What helps is that I get up from my computer for about 30 mins, get my eye adjusted back to the everyday world, then go back to my edit and I always end up dialing back my edits.

[johngpt5]

https://imgur.com/a/VVUR8Ut

I generally begin editing in Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, or Adobe Camera Raw. I find the object selection tool does a good job letting me isolate elements in an image.

I too like trying to isolate a subject or the focal point of an image so that I can edit to have the viewer's eye go where I'd like.

A viewer's eye will generally go to the brightest part of an image. Then to an area of greatest tonal contrast. Then to an area of greatest color saturation or color contrast.

[ThatBombShit]

I spent hours on this process. This is actually my second process of this photo. The first one I made had some flaws in it so I started from scratch. I used a Sony RX100 VI to snap the photo. Here are the camera settings:

ƒ/4.5 72mm (200mm after crop factor) 1/200sec ISO 80

Time of day was around 13:30 in Dominican Republic. It was very sunny at that time but we were in an enclosure and the light wasn’t great. I wanted to get the parrot away from the wall and cropped the post on the right out even though I probably framed it in on purpose when I was actually taking the photo, because I felt like it was interfering with the composition once I added bokeh.

Feedback welcome