Image Rescue

This wildlife shot needs composition and exposure help

This quirky portrait of a goose has a few issues that need sorting. We need to recompose it for a start, and it’s overexposed, so some of the details have been lost.

We’ll open the photo in Camera Raw (you could use Lightroom, too) and start by addressing the composition 1 . In the Geometry Panel, we can select Scale and enlarge the bird in the frame while Camera Raw retains the resolution; we’ll also tweak the X and Y offsets to position the head where we want it.

In the Basic Panel, we can address the overexposure

2 by taking Exposure to -50 and Highlights to -60. Moving down, we can push Texture up to +20 and Clarity to +10 to crispen up the feather details 3 .

Finally, we want to improve the overall sharpness. The beak is pin-sharp, but crucially the eye is just out 4 . We can’t make it sharp but we can compenste if we open the image in Photoshop.

In Photoshop’s Layers Panel, we can make a copy of the original layer then go to Filter > Other > High

Pass. We set Radius to 4.0 and click OK to confirm, then change the Blending Mode for that layer to Overlay to finish.