Photoshoping images

[Tony Sparkes]

Hi Guys

Moving along from shooting to post processing it would seem to me beside the normal exposure,colour,cropping etc...of pictures particularly with avian shots most of us need to remove at times twigs,branches etc.. around our subjects, especially those little things that stick out of our feathered friends heads, backside etc.. and the obligatory changing of sky's from the dull blown out grey's we sometimes get, to those blues of we all love.

As there are many ways (quick selection tool, blending, and the great content aware tool where its not so critical) I believe to do these changes what techniques do most use in CS5 for these post process activities.:2

Regards

Tony

[Roger Clark]

Tony,
You'll probably get a lot of comments on the ethics of doing this. But in my opinion, it takes too much time at the computer to fix most things, so I work to get it right in the camera. If there is a stick behind a bird's head, for example, I don't take the image. I'll wait for the bird to move. Now if it is a rare bird I've never imaged before, I'll make a documentary image but probably never show it, Not getting the shot is an excuse to go back and try again.

Having said that, I'm still using CS4 (I am building a new machine on which I'll put CS5). In CS4 and earlier versions, I've not found a single tool that can do a perfect selection all the time. I'll use a variety of tools, color selection, magic wand selection tool, magnetic selection tool, and then when it gets down to the details, the basic selection tool. Then I use refine edge rather than feather. I'm usually doing selections for dodging and burning, and for smoothing out noise.

Roger

[Tony Sparkes]

Hi Roger

Thanks for your reply. I agree with your comment on do it in camera but here in South Africa we have little choice to take what we can in the bush, there is so much vegetation around if we waited to get it right we would never take a picture:bg3:

Regards

Tony

[WIlliam Maroldo]

I'm in agreement with Roger, which for some reason has been happening alot lately, about considering how much time it would take to "fix" something while deciding when to release the shutter, and getting it right in the camera. However, the idea if you don't get it this time, you'll get another chance later, doesn't always work out that way. Sure most of the time you'll get another chance, but it might be a year! I am referring to migrating birds that show up, with their best breeding colors, for several weeks once a year. Even resident birds sport breeding plummage for much less time than I would like, and you have to remember how much time it takes to simply find them.
That said, I think content-aware fills in CS5 is the most significant image editing advancement I've seen since I started using these programs in 1998, and makes short work of elements that need removal, with a bit of clone-stamp tool clean up. Images that I previously didn't want to spend the time on can be worked much more quickly, which is a good thing. regards~Bill

[Johan Kruger]

check out some of topaz labs products, they are all addins for photoshop and are very cheap and pretty amazing. remask 3 in particular.

Roger I quite like your attitude - wait for a better shot or get him next time :)

[Ray Rozema]

I would like to echo Johan's comment. Topaz remask makes great masks very quickly,which can greatly speed up cleaning up images. It does take a little while to learn how to use it optimally. I have no vested interest in Topaz. Thanks to Roger for reminding us to not get lazy in the field and fall into the trap " I fix it in photoshop"

[John Chardine]

Although I agree with Roger, I wanted to say how difficult it is at least for me to shoot the way he suggests. Even with common birds I am fixated on the bird and it's behaviour, head angle, the eye, focus point, etc etc and everything is happening so quickly. Very often I don't even see the stick coming out of the back of the bird until I get the image on the computer screen. Although I continue to work at my camera technique and field skills, this problem seems to be part of the wiring of my brain.

I use the Topaz line of filters and think they are fantastic. Remask is great. I have not found content-aware fills (CAFs) to be useful yet. I would like to see Adobe develop this further. A shortcoming right now is that with the fill you can't define a target for the fill- i.e., where the fill is going to come from in the image. With this added feature you could reduce the number of really big mistakes the current CAF seems to make.

[Ray Rozema]

I agree John. it is not infrequent I get home and look at an image from the day and say "you bonehead."

[Allen Hirsch]

I agree John. it is not infrequent I get home and look at an image from the day and say "you bonehead."


Same here. Even on the LCD screen in the field, I often "miss" problems with BG or FG until I view them on a computer monitor.