The Blues in Double Time

On a dreary, rainy spring morning I was delighted to see four Indigo Buntings flitting around the bird feeders in my yard.  I started snapping pictures, hoping to get some good images.  I was never able to catch an image of the Indigos together. The birds in this shot are actually the same bird – brought together with the magic of Photoshop.

Most times I use Photoshop to tweak my photos – to crop, straighten, correct the color, etc.  Some times I use it to create an entirely different image than what I started with.  Here’s the basic process for this double Indigo image.  Remember, all the Indigos in these images are the same bird, just captured in different locations.

I started with photo 1.  I straightened it, enlarged it and cropped it. I also did a little work to clean up some of the white spots of bird poop on the side of the feeder that you don’t notice on the small version but would be ugly when enlarged.

Time to add another Indigo Bunting to the image.  I isolated the Indigo Bunting on his perch from photo 2 and copied and pasted it to photo 1.  I had to scale the second bird to proper proportions and overlay it over the perch on the opposite side of the first bird.  Then I cropped it to the image you see as photo 3.

Looking at photo 3, I decided that the Goldfinches were a distraction, so I removed them by cloning parts of the feeder and surrounding background over them.

Things were looking pretty good, but I decided that the image was wider than I really wanted.  To  change it’s overall proportions I narrowed the feeder, bringing the birds closer together.

After tweaking the contrast and sharpness the project was complete.  I hope you like it.

A few days later it dawned on me – I could have created an image with the feeder full of Indigo Buntings. Maybe I’ll work on that when I’m stuck in the house on a cold winter’s day, wishing I could be out photographing birds.

(Click on the main image for a larger view.)