# The camera does not lie (Photoshop does!)



## DonaldG

My daughter came to stay for the weekend and showed me some photos she took at a zoo. A nice shot of a tiger but spoilt because of the very necessary safety wire fence.










A wee while in photoshop made for a dramatic conversion.
:grin:


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## Wrench97

Very nice was that done using the clone stamp or another means?


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## DonaldG

Primarily the clone brush about 11 px with max softness


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## wintersnow

Good job.


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## zuluclayman

good old clone brush - comes in handy if you have the patience - well done!


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## DonaldG

Another photo from my daughter. A nice memory for her visit. Shame about the wires....









Tight cropping of just the zebra's head made for a more interesting image.

The techniques used in this image were:
Crop tool to select the animal's head. 
Healing brush to remove the top wire in the sky
Clone brush to remove the wire across the zebra's head & body. Altering the tool size and 'attack' direction to suit the section being done.
Blur tool to blur the background and the animal on the left so that the subject matter, the Head, stood out.


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## storm5510

Fascinating. For me, Photoshop has too much baggage and is very hard to learn. I never could do anything with it.

:4-dontkno


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## csc2000e

Wow, great job. I like taking people heads and switching them around with other peoples bodies in pictures. That's great fun...:grin:


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## Ensuing Coo

Great job - You should take some more. Did she edit it or did you?


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## DonaldG

I can not tell a lie...My daughter too the photos & I did a Photoshop jobby on them...:grin:


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## Done_Fishin

we'll have to set up a learning environment .. I have seen my daughter swap things from photo to photo and do a professional (to my aging eyes =- I can usually spot a fake :laugh however I have never found the time to sit and master photo editing .. grabbing & doing mix & match on cartoon stuff isn't too bad .. the component borders are well defined and as such very easy to work with.


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## zuluclayman

One of the keys to successful photo editing is using feathering of selections, blending of layers and fine adjustments to colour values, lighting etc. so things don't look so "cut & paste" Oh and lots of patience and spare (?) time :grin:


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## DonaldG

zuluclayman said:


> One of the keys to successful photo editing is using feathering of selections, blending of layers and fine adjustments to colour values, lighting etc. so things don't look so "cut & paste" Oh and lots of patience and spare (?) time :grin:


Absolutely - especially feathering... If feathering was not a feature available on the clone brush, the tiger photo above would not look '_genuine_'


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## deleted122510

Good. I wish I was as good as you guys. I'm just a Photoshop noob!


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## DonaldG

Re feathering, see this thread


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## yustr

Here's a shot that benefited greatly using the clone brush and feathering.

I also learned to look at more then the subject.

I wanted to capture the tennis player in action. When I saw that he was mid-air I had to use it and had to show the ground - otherwise he's just floating in nothingness. Except there's that horrid crack in the court surface. So out comes the clone tool and a couple of minutes later its so much better. The shadow wasn't easy but I thought it essential - very high magnification with the tool down to 1 or 2 pixels. (Yes I also took out the weeds in the fence.) What do you all think?

Original:











Edited:


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## zuluclayman

Much better :grin: - in both composition (good use of cropping) and finish without the crack - can still see some of it but not enough to detract from the overall image.
I do find the green section and white line at the bottom a bit distracting though and probably would have cropped it out if the dimensions allowed for it while still leaving a pleasing ratio to the sides (not a square - closer to the golden mean in other words). If the dimensions didn't allow it I would be tempted to get the trusty clone brush out again and make it the same colour as the rest of the court. here it is cropped:


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## DonaldG

That brilliant! The only thing I might try as an experiment is to use the blur tool and blur the background fairly heavily. 

However, as is, I love the freezing of action but with movement blur on the racket. Nice one.


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## DonaldG

I hope you don't mind. I took the image and applied a blur to the background as a demo of what I mean:










The techniques I used in Photoshop:

1) Ctrl-L for levels and lifted the top end a fraction and 'cloned' in the bottom right corner over the green bit.
2) made a duplicate layer
3) Converted original image into a layer (bottom one in the layer stack)
4) Ensuring bottom layer being the active one, applied:
...Filter-->Blur-->Gausian Blur--> at 2.5
5) Selected top layer and 'add layer mask'
6) select paintbrush 9 pixels at 95% hardness. 
7) select BLACK colour.
8) ensuring layer mask is selected, 'painted' carefully around the outside of the player and his shadow, thus revealing the blurred image beneath.
9) when finished, flattened layers and saved as a jpg.....
Time involve in Photoshop: approx 10 minutes.

By using a layer mask, painting black actually is the equivalent of painting transparency on the layer. If you make a mistake, all you have to do is change the colour to white and paint over the mistake. that is the equivalent of removing the transparency created in an area by mistake....

By applying a blur to the backround, it gives the impression of a big telephoto that has a very shallow depth of field, making the required subject stand out.


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## Done_Fishin

The blurred background is a great improvemnt .. I am not sure why it wa required to remove the weeds .. might have added something to leave them in and blur them out along with the fence .. just to break the monotony of the colour ..nothings perfect in this day and age ... until Photoshop gets in on the act that is .. :laugh:


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## yustr

DonaldG said:


> I hope you don't mind.


Not at all. It does look better. Thanks for sharing the tip.


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## miley2g8

For someone new to photoshopping this is amazing to see what the small detailed changes can do to make a photo so much more captivating! Nice work all


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## Mr. Cormont

I´m really amazed by the patience you demonstrated working that tiger! Very well done!


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## DonaldG

Thanks Miley & Mr C :wave:


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