Looking for help on this one, is it possible to remove this branch?

[Barry Ekstrand]

I got this White-Crowned Sparrow when shooting from the back door of a blind. Unfortunately as you can see there is an out of focus branch in front of its feet. I was not able to move to a position where the branch was out of the way before the sparrow flew away, so this is what I have. I like the shot otherwise (other than cropping & resizing no other work has been done on it yet).

Any thoughts on how to remove the branch and still have feet that look right? All my attempts so far have failed. If it isn't possible, what would you do with this one - crop into a head shot, 3/4 body shot, leave it as is, or throw it away? Any input will be appreciated.

Barry

[Diane Miller]

It's a great shot of the bird -- sharp and detailed, good light. I'd start with the easy things -- remove the branches in the LL, the two sticking out of the head and back, the two horizontal ones in the UL and the very OOF one through the tail. Then I'd ask myself if that's enough. It wouldn't be impossible to remove the branch in front of the feet but it would require a lot of care to rebuild the feet. Even the perch branch could be tricky to get right, but not impossible. When you start cloning, you're a painter! You could make the job easier by removing everything left of the perch branch, but maybe things are looking a little stark then?

When I'm cloning in light or dark areas I use a trick to be sure I'm getting smooth tonalities. Make a Curves or Levels layer above your layers stack and bring both ends in until there is huge, ugly contrast. Set it to Luminosity mode if saturation gets in your way. Then as you clone you can really see what you're getting.

I'd live with it as is rather than throw it away.

[Don Lacy]

Hi Barry, The amount of cloning and work needed to remove the branch is well beyond my skill set, Wish i could help but I am not sure were you would get the pixels needed to build the feet of the sparrow

[Daniel Cadieux]

Most of that branch is easy enough to remove, but the part covering the feet is a tough one to get right without leaving some suspect evidence and yes it would take meticulous and long work. I don't have much patience with processing so that would help sway my decision to leaving it as is too. These guys can be easy to attract to a feeder setup so I would just give myself a reason to go back and get some other images of this species.