those of us not having huge lenses, tripods, infinite patience etc come home with bird pics nice enough to want to keep and share, though never going to become definitives.

I have come round to this as a way of using NX2 to best purpose, maximising use of RAW/nef working, but balancing it with selection strength. The example was taken at 5.30pm and in excitement of watching the birdie had failed to notice the light had become artistic rather than strong and the auto was down to 1/200 or less at f5.6.

Frame 1 shows the sharpening linked to contrast adjustment (LCH) on a mask created using a 'selection control point' reinforced at the pointy bits of bird with an ordinary soft selection brush. By itself or using the tempting 'quick fix' level adjuster, this has previously led to a lot of grainy noise.

Frame 2 shows this reduced by the 'camera settings'>colour noise reduction and correcting the exposure using 'quick fix'>exposure compensation - both RAW adjustments. You can overcome the confusion between what are and are not RAW adjustments in the interface by trying out a .tif file and all RAW/nef is greyed out. The colour noise reduction is a bit like 'Neat Image' balancing sharpening where needed against noise reduction where not; in nef the software knows the camera without being taught.

Obviously perfectionists would bin this, but then where do you see a perfect image of a young kestrel in nice light and not a near-stationary hover pose?

Final and one or two others at/near
http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/imag...37831/original