It is a good macro of the bug - sharp, in focus, well lit and well exposed. The only problem I see is the big, out of focus, bright, distracting white rectangle in the background - it is worth paying a bit more attention to getting non-distracting backgrounds, generally, but particularly for macro shots.
I checked the original and the edited version and there is some halo between the bug and the green leave on both the original and the edited version. I had to zoom in and magnify it a great deal in order to see it. So apparently it is nothing I did with USM.
The rest of it came out when I compressed it to (150k) for loading to DPC. How I can avoid that in the future I am not sure.
Robin,
The belly & front leg is also where I was seeing it. I agree that with those USM settings it is unlikely that it's due to USM, however if it was there originally it would have been enhanced by even the conservative USM.
I have seen this before on some of my shots with my ol' trust Nikon 995, but have not noticed it with the 10D-100mm/2.8 macro lens combination. But this is pretty much a 100% crop, correct? As such, it's "worst case", and it is still quite sharp =)
I've read a bit about "true unsharp masking" which can remove/reduce halos, but I have not had an opportunity to play with the technique. Here's a link to discussion of the technique.
I took another look at the original. The white halo around the bottom of his belly is from the bright sun shining on the leave from the other side. It was enhanced by the USM. I may have had the Ratio set to high. I have read about so many different settings for this. I think I need to lower it to 0.3 - 0.5 like I read in an article the other day.
Has anyone heard of the Command "Defringe"? I read about this in a Adobe Photoshop tutorial. It is suppose to replace the white halo around and object after cropping and pasting it into another photo. It said that it replaced the white with the colors from the surrounding pixels. Seems like it would not want to be very large? Wonder if this would fix the USM Halo?
