[nirofo]

Hi Gordon

Your image file is very small to start with, if you then crop out the section with the Raptor in it from the full photo you are left with an even smaller image file to work with. Increasing this very small file by interpolation only increases the pixel size making the resulting image very blocky, sharpening and noise reduction only help slightly on the original file before cropping, using these tools on the cropped image increases the halo effect making the image unusable.

There is no real substitute for making the original photo as large as possible, I don't know what camera you are using, but most allow for saving an image in RAW or JPEG Fine. Either of these are essential in wildlife photography and should enable you to pull out the maximum detail from your image, especially when enlarging only a small segment of the image.

I would have to say that it would be almost impossible to obtain a decent image from the photo you have submitted.

nirofo.