AI Feather Generation

[Jack McEwan]

Attached are two images of a mourning dove. In the first image, feathers were clipped off as the dove flew out of the frame in the lower right. Photoshop's Generative Expand was used expanding the image and generating appropriate feather tips. Bravo Photoshop! NB: The faint line at the junction of the generative expand was removed in the third image.

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[JoelKlein]

Oh my!

 

[Karl]

That's really a great way to save a clipped wing! There are a couple of things to watch for, however. You can get a line from where the canvas was expanded (I can see a faint line in your image) and a lower resolution of the piece added (not a problem with a blurry background). The line can be fixed with one of the tools in PS, like blur, patch, or remove.

 

[Jack McEwan]

That's really a great way to save a clipped wing! There are a couple of things to watch for, however. You can get a line from where the canvas was expanded (I can see a faint line in your image) and a lower resolution of the piece added (not a problem with a blurry background). The line can be fixed with one of the tools in PS, like blur, patch, or remove.

Just noticed the line. I should have been more attentive. The remove tool should easily correct it.

 

[PhotoLover]

Sometimes you can fix a wingtip quite well, sometimes not. This is one of my favorite Osprey shots (I should post to presentation, it's not unusual but it's nice) however I clipped a wingtip.

Esteemed photographers, which wing was clipped? I honestly can't tell just by looking, but perhaps someone with a better eye than me can see the generated part of the image.

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[Karl]

I'm guessing the Osprey's left wing because the rachis isn't showing, less detail, and slight halo between feathers. Very nice work!

 

[PhotoLover]

I'm guessing the Osprey's left wing because the rachis isn't showing, less detail, and slight halo between feathers. Very nice work!

No, it was the right wingtip. Even straight out of the camera that left wingtip looks a touch off. Looking at the original, I think what you are seeing is that when I masked the subject, it got a little of the background hence when I tweaked the subject exposure a bit it affected the background between the feathers and that is what you are seeing; i.e some sloppy editing. I'll go back and redo that to clean it up.

I only clipped a little bit of the right wingtip, but PS did a pretty good job fixing it with context-sensitive fill.

 

[Jack McEwan]

Sometimes you can fix a wingtip quite well, sometimes not. This is one of my favorite Osprey shots (I should post to presentation, it's not unusual but it's nice) however I clipped a wingtip.

Esteemed photographers, which wing was clipped? I honestly can't tell just by looking, but perhaps someone with a better eye than me can see the generated part of the image.


View attachment 87965

Wonderful Osprey image!

 

[Karl]

MattK showed a neat trick to select the bird without the spaces between the primaries. First select the bird and second subtract the background... has worked great for me.

 

[PhotoLover]

MattK showed a neat trick to select the bird without the spaces between the primaries. First select the bird and second subtract the background... has worked great for me.

My real mistake was to ... for some reason, this picture is actually a couple of years old ... do the masking and then decide to go and try and fix the wingtip. And now it's a bit painful to go all the way back and start with the wingtip. The image with the fixed wingtip went though PS and I've lost the masking I did in LR.

I'll try the subtract the background thing. Also on many images subtracting the color of the background works as well. Either way, the way I did this image is sorta mangled.

Wonderful Osprey image!

Thanks. This from a morning with nice light and a lot of Osprey action where I got a number of decent shots.

 

[Jack McEwan]

MattK showed a neat trick to select the bird without the spaces between the primaries. First select the bird and second subtract the background... has worked great for me.

I assume he was using Lr. In most cases a selection using cloud processing in Ps will correctly mask the osprey without including the background between the feathers. Even if it doesn’t, the selection can be easily corrected using the lasso or other tools. In my experience, cloud masking in Ps is significantly more accurate than subject masking in Lr.

 

[JoelKlein]

I say its the right wing, to our eyes on screen it’s the left.

 

[PhotoLover]

I assume he was using Lr. In most cases a selection using cloud processing in Ps will correctly mask the osprey without including the background between the feathers. Even if it doesn’t, the selection can be easily corrected using the lasso or other tools. In my experience, cloud masking in Ps is significantly more accurate than subject masking in Lr.

That's interesting. I usually don't go into PS, because I haven't spent the time learning to be efficient there. But while I like the LR masking quite well, it does struggle to get feathers right.

 

[bleirer]

If one doesn't like the idea of AI, the liquefy tool in photoshop is also a way to stretch a tiny bit of wingtip.

 

[Jack McEwan]

If one doesn't like the idea of AI, the liquefy tool in photoshop is also a way to stretch a tiny bit of wingtip.

An alternative would be to make a selection of an acceptable wingtip from the same or similar image on a layer in Ps. Then use the move tool in conjunction with free transform to appropriately place the wingtip in the desired position. This technique wasn’t applicable in the original image as the base of the image required expansion to accommodate the wingtip.