What is the right way of doing this?

[Joaquin Barbará]

Hi everyone, I have an image here that is of no particular relevance but I was not happy with the shadow on the bird mostly because I was unable to get a clean image. Because I am very new to PS I decided to try to save the image.
I think I did a reasonably good job with the body, but the poor bird looks like it has a shower cap.
I used the Stamp Tool with a soft edge brush, opacity set at 75% and flow at 100%.
Is there a better way of doing this?

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Again thanks in advance.

Joaquin

[Diane Miller]

Nice image! I like the inclusion of the setting.

It looks like you did a great job with the body, but the shadow is in a difficult spot across the head. Instead of using a partial opacity soft brush, you'll get cleaner detail with 100% opacity and a small and "somewhat hard" brush. Zoom way in and spend some time. The partial opacity at the edges of a soft brush, even if it is 100% opaque, will average out fine detail.

Cloning also has issues with "repeats" which can be difficult to fix without getting the area blurred from too many passes.

One thing I'll try before cloning is Nik Viveza. Clicking a Control Point on the shadow will often give an amazing "selection" with appropriately soft edges. Then you can adjust brightness and contrast to sometimes remove the shadow well. A few clicks outside the area will be needed, with the "zero" settings, to refine the affected area to remove any spillover.

If that doesn't work, other options are the Patch tool or Content-Aware Fill, but they aren't always ideal for a complex area such as you have here. Every image will be best dealt with differently.

Excellent exploration for someone new to PS! You might also consider cropping a bit from the right side, to remove the branching in the upper right corner. That would give more emphasis to the bird.

Hope to see more of your learning progress here!!

[Joaquin Barbará]

Used hard edge brush with opacity set at 100% and used the stamp tool to clone the forehead. Created a soft edge mask with the Quick Mask tool and then Used Nik Effex Sharpener and sharpend the area to the max.
In LR Cropped and took out the branch on the R upper corner.
Opened in Color Effex Pro and adjusted warmth.
It looks a little better.

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[Marina Scarr]

Your RP does a much better job of showing off this bird. You did a great job with your exposure and a nice pose on the bird. If you can coax this bird down to a lower, less distracting setting, it would really help.

[Diane Miller]

Much more lively color in the RP. I would have left a little more room on the right -- the tail feels a little crowded. I don't know how accurate the reconstruction on the crown is, but I think you did an impressive job for a difficult situation. I see some clone "repeats" that shouldn't be too hard to repair.

I always clone on a BG layer copy, so I have an easy out if I mess up, or else make an empty layer right above the BG and set the clone tool to "Current & Below."

Be careful of a completely hard-edged brush -- you want just a little blending in most cases. But a very nice job overall. Looking forward to more posts!

[Grant Yang]

Your repost is a big improvement. I think you did go over the boundaries cloning the left side of the bird's head a smidge.