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Any photoshop gurus up for a challenge?? (1 Viewer)

Ruby

Well-known member
Hi,

Looking through some old photographs today and came across these....

The problem is that the first Smew picture (the grey one!) is not a bad view of the bird, but the overall photograph is spoilt by the drab colour of the water plus the fact that it is not complementary to the colours of the bird.

On the other hand, the second pic is of much worse photgraphic quality, but at least the background is a bit more interesting!

Being someone who tends to use Photoshop only for pretty basic post-processing, my question is "Is there some sort of fancy functionality that can be used to tweak the background of my grey pic to make it a bit more pleasing on the eye?"

Anyone fancy having a go.....?


Rgds.... Ruby
 

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I reckon you could lighten the first one up a bit to improve it, but I couldn't do anything with the colour. It woudl obviously work better on the full size images, you'd also be able to clone out the vingetting.
 

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Ruby said:
Hi,

Looking through some old photographs today and came across these....

The problem is that the first Smew picture (the grey one!) is not a bad view of the bird, but the overall photograph is spoilt by the drab colour of the water plus the fact that it is not complementary to the colours of the bird.

On the other hand, the second pic is of much worse photgraphic quality, but at least the background is a bit more interesting!

Being someone who tends to use Photoshop only for pretty basic post-processing, my question is "Is there some sort of fancy functionality that can be used to tweak the background of my grey pic to make it a bit more pleasing on the eye?"

Anyone fancy having a go.....?


Rgds.... Ruby

This is a crude go - duplicated smew then added blue semi-opaque layer below. Would look better with a bit of gaussian blur on the edges of the bird, probably...
 

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Have cloned-out the vignetting, de-saturated blue to reduce c/a on face, warmed-up colour balance a touch, selected bird and applied a bit of usm, inverted selection to add bit of blur to rest of shot, brought out the eye a touch (dodge and burn tools), altered levels a bit to try and get rid of burnt-out highlights but they can't really be altered. That's about it...
 

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Here is my effort.

I first used the magic wand to pick out the smew set on 12%, inversed the selection and used the hue saturation tool on the background. It would be better to do on the full sized image.
 

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Last edited:
I like that one,Christine,rich colours.The white plumage stands out from the deep blue of the sea.Very good.
 
Hi Guys,

Thanks very much for your time and interest - this is just the type of functionality that I haven't really got to grips with yet.... One problem is that I got my copy of Photoshop (Elements) free with my camera, and whilst it's been worth every penny, it didn't come with a manual!

I am familiar with some of the techniques mentioned - any chance you could supply me with some idiot-proof instructions regarding how you managed to do some of this stuff :-

Cloning out the vignetting
"Duplicated smew then added blue semi-opaque layer below"
"Selected bird and applied a bit of usm, inverted selection to add bit of blur to rest of shot" (particularly the 'selected bird' part...)

..and...

Christine - basically, everything that you did!!

I'll then try to get to grips with these new techniques and have a go at processing the original image to see if I can't improve matters a bit.


Thanks again..... Ruby
 
Firstly, Elements doesn't have all the functions that Photoshop has, so some actions might not be possible but you can do several things OK

Cloning is done by the Rubber Stamp/Clone Stamp tool (hovering over each tool on the tool pallette will tell you its name) - you can vary the size, in pixels, of the cloning area (up above the image along with several other functions), so when you've decided which bit will look best to cover the bit you don't want set the size, left click the new area whilst holding the Alt key then move over to where you want it and left click it into place (edit>undo will remove it if you've got it wrong). Play around with different sizes, mixing bits from different areas or doing a whole lot at once by dragging the mouse along whilst holding the left click on - it will 'follow' in the same manner from the area where you 'cloned.'

Using one of the Lasso tool options to 'draw' round an area will 'select' it when you've completed the line all around it - any functions you apply will then only be active within the 'marching ants' area. Go to Select>inverse and then you'll have selected the bit outside of your previous area.

USM is unsharp mask and it's under 'filter'>sharpen>unsharp mask, Gaussian blur is filter>blur>gaussian blur. You'll have to select an amount in each filter, unfortunately, so decisions have to be made! With usm keep the 'radius' down to 1 pixel or less then try varying amounts to suit (threshold is the difference in 'tone' before sharpening is applied). Gaussian blur only wants a small figure just to soften the detail a bit otherwise it looks false. With the full version of photoshop, where you can select 'channels' you can apply a spot of gaussian blur to just the blue channel as an ad hoc noise-reducer
 
I opened the image and noticed a bit of jpg artifacts, so I applied a gaussian smoothing. I then cloned out the vignetting, and adjusted overall brightness/contrast using the Curves adjustment, making sure not to oversaturate the breast and forehead feathers. I then selected the eye using the lasso tool and gave it a bit more contrast/brightness, and sharpen filter. I then used the magnetic lasso on the whole duck, applied an unsharpen mask (75%, radius 3, threshold 0), inverted the image, and applied another Gaussian smooth (1.0) to the background. I noticed that when I saved the image as a jpg, and reopened it, it had all the original jpg artifacts, so I resized the image to 800X600 w/ 300dpi resolution, and resaved.

Jerry
 

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Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the tips and help...Many facilities there that I hadn't been aware of up until now!

I've been having a little play around this morning and came up with this - clearly more lassoing practice is required!!
 

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Your getting the hang of it. You just need to play around with the feathering of the tools so they don't look like seperate items. Thats a great start.
 
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