Feeling Spiffy!

The reason I like this photo is that it was really sharp out of camera even though this Cattle Egret was trying to stay a little hidden in a very green tree covered area. He just seemed to need a nice background, so here it is. It was painted Corel Painter and matched the color in his beautiful beak. Since I wanted some of the original background to show through around his feet, the texture was placed above the bird and the bird’s layer mask (from Topaz – see sidebar for website link – ReMask 5) was used so the bird appears. Then I could use a low opacity brush on the bottom of the bird layer mask to paint in some of the grass detail where he was standing. Several layers of painting before Topaz Texture Effect’s  Soft Warm Breeze preset was applied on a stamped layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E). (I changed the Overlay color from orange to black and Diffusion Strength to 0.62.) The eyes and beak were sharpened and Nik Viveza 2 was used to finish up the overall effect. Really fun to paint!…..Digital Lady Syd