Two amazingly beautiful bee-eaters

Editing notesI imported the RAW file into Lightroom Classic with the adaptive color preset, but otherwise I did not process the image in LC. Instead, I started by opening it in the On1 NoNois plugin. Since the birds are photographed at quite a distance, I crop the image in On1 NoNoise immediately after I have noise processed it (ISO 1600). Then I save it down to LC as a DNG file. After that, I open the file in the On1 Effects plugin where I mask the birds using the fantastic Supermask tool. I apply the following effects to the birds: Channel Mixer (Warming Polarizer), Tone Enhancer (Contrast) (Higlights Darker) and (Midtones Lighter). Using local adjustment, I lighten shadows and exposure around the birds' eyes. I make an inverted mask of the birds and darken the background slightly and add a lighter vignetting effect. Next, I sharpen the birds slightly with the Sharpness effect filter (Amazing Detail Finder). Next, I exported the file to the desktop as a JPG sRGB.

• Canon EOS R5m2
• ƒ/9
• 800mm
• ISO 1600
• 1/4000 sec