Surgery - "Per Ardua Ad Astra"

"Through Adversity to the stars" which this little female Anna's Hummingbird had in mind and required surgery to accomplish this feat.

I started out with a photo I took this morning in our garden, and saw that I needed to perform surgery on little Anna & replace her right wing. Here's what I did.

Opened capture in CS5

1. Cropped out left wing & saved it as "Wing"

2. Image>Image Rotation>Flipped it Vertically
" " >90 CW

3. Image>Image Rotation> Arbitrary 10 CW in intervals to match wing angles

Then opened original, pressed "V" (Move) and moved "Wing" into place, used eraser and background erasers to blend new wing in place.

Gentle PP with CS5

CC's welcome & always appreciated.

Warm hugs

Gus aka Sawbones.

"Priceless" paid by Mastercard . . . .

Gus, Great how to, I do see a little bit of artifacts in the background still near the wing and ULC but the repair job looks great! As always thanks for sharing, we all appreciate it:S3:

Thanks for looking and your comments.

I thought the same when looking at the post and was a bit surprised as I only lab sharpened with very low amounts, radius 0.3. Probably should have left it, as I notice that original seems to look OK. I used JPG instead of RAW as I usually do. (Shoot both RAW & LF JPG) and should have not sharpened.

Gus :2eyes2:

Hi Folks,

Only easy way to reduce artifacts is to resize smaller?

Will give it a go.

Looks like beak still has slight.

Gus

Excellent job with the surgery, Doctor Gus! :bg3: Love the pose and thanks a lot for sharing your workflow.

Nice composition, Gus. Nice surgery and thanks for sharing the approach.

You're a whiz with a scalpel, Gus! Outstanding work and it's great to see your workflow.

Thanks, Gus, for this tutorial on hummingbird surgery.

I've had bilateral arthroplasty in the past, but if I need further surgery in the future, can I count on you? Your technique looks really painless! :S3: