White Ibises Playing at the Sea

This image is of a group of White Ibis at the West Palm Beach Zoo – when someone threw out some treats, the whole exhibit sort of “flew the coop” and came out with everybody walking around on the sidewalks. Totally funny! I decided to make it a more interesting get-away area! Basically just sharpened the birds in Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Detail 3. Then selected the birds from their background – I used Topaz ReMask 5. With a layer mask several birds were removed where they were partly hidden by other birds. Several layers were added for painting – used Grut’s FX Cloud brushes (love these brushes) for clouds and ground areas, Grut’s Dusky Covert brush for color on birds, Kyle T. Websters Sparse Bristle Watercolor brush for lines on body,  Aaron Blaise’s water brush sb 46 10, and Frostbo’s Grass Set 2 brushes 005 and 009. The newly free Nik Color Efex Pro 4 was used to create the final effect (Filters used: Tonal Contrast, Brilliance/Warmth, Vignette: Lens, Remove Color Cast, Graduated Filters, and Image Borders) – I like to just play around with the different filters to see what happens! This was just a lot of fun to paint – and not that difficult!…..Digital Lady Syd