Help with cloning; smoothing the waterways; color.

[Jack Breakfast]

Greetings, gentle birdfiends. I have not posted here before and am eager to receive your help with a couple of basic Photoshop editing concerns. I submit this picture of a goldeneye along the hibernal waterways. I haven't touched the picture - I simply resized it to 1200px. There are two things I wish to correct here:

1) The rectangular white ice reflection to the left of the goldeneye's head. This is a very distracting element, and I would like to rid my picture of this. I've tried a few times with the clone stamp and patch tools, but have had problems getting things looking clean and natural.

2) The green patch at the top of the frame: I would like to have the green strip run the entire length of the top of the frame. I feel like this can be done with the clone stamp and patch tools as well, but again, I've had problems keeping things natural-looking.

I would be terribly grateful for some advice here, and I do have a couple of specific questions:

When using the clone stamp, I've always set my brush to 0% hardness, but have since read through some tutorials which suggest that I should be using a harder brush? Also, what are the best opacity and flow settings? Actually, I'm not sure if "flow" is even a concern, or if this is a setting that applies only to the airbrush?

My sincere thanks for your time and trouble. I appreciate it very much indeed!

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I think it is a lovely image, I might be tempted to just crop out the blue from the top. I also used the content aware > fill, did some cloning to both the top, and the reflection, over-top of what content aware gave me.

[Jack Breakfast]

Thank you Jackie, I appreciate it. I agree with you RE the crop. As for the elimination using content-aware fill: I've never used that tool before. If you have any tips, including brush hardness and opacity settings, I'd be very grateful.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Jack, just go to edit>fill>content aware. Select the area you want fixed using the lasso tool. It will make a selection with marching ants for you, click OK. Sometimes it does the trick all on its' own. Sometimes I go over what is has done using the clone tool, a soft brush at 0 hardness, adjust the brush according to what size you are working on. Be careful not to get any repeating patterns. Working on a separate layer so you can fix any mistakes, or sometimes use a mask to brush back in a tiny area you may want to keep.

[Jack Breakfast]

Thanks Jackie, you did a MUCH better job than I did, but I'll keep practicing. I appreciate your help very much.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Just keep practicing, mine was just quick. I notice you are in Toronto too!

[Diane Miller]

Very nice shot, and good advice from Jackie. I like her crop, too. The softer appearance at the top of the cloned area could be fixed by doing the cloning on a BG copy then masking out that one small area to reveal the original detail there.

It could also go with some off the bottom and left, for me. You can also select the Patch tool and outline the area you want to fill and drag it to a somewhat similar area and it will try to fill it in. Easy to find online tutorials, but it's very intuitive. All these fill things will often leave some posterized edges that need to be cloned out.

See my tutorial in Educational Resources on cloning in light and dark areas. Pitfalls lurk there.

I almost always have the clone brush at 100% opacity and 0% hardness. Sometimes for soft touchup I'll use around 50%. Ignore Flow. Pay attention to the Aligned checkbox (you usually want it on) and to the Layers to use, to its right. Also you can change the Mode, on the left -- sometimes you want to just darken or lighten, but it can give an odd effect in some situations.

[Jack Breakfast]

Thank you very much, Diane. Normally I don't do this sort of thing with my pictures (not that I'm getting high-and-mighty about it, I assure you) but in a situation like this, I don't wish to let an unpleasant reflective splotch ruin an otherwise-decent picture. I'll keep trying...

[Sandy Witvoet]

Hi Jack, I was going to comment on this image in Avian... because I love the duck among the ice flows/formations. She is quite pretty. I'd like to see a teeny bit more on the right, and a bit less than teeny on the left. I don't do layers often, but first get the subject bird in the frame where I want it, then evaluate the other elements and address accordingly. I'm pretty good at cloning... and do it if I deem necessary. Have used a variety of edges and strengths. The burn tool can be tricky and may end up looking rather gray. (I only use this one at about 3%). I did some cloning on three areas of my Goldeneyes posted here on ETL... let me know what you think and if you can spot them... AHA! A challenge! Well, other than that, I would like your permission to have a "go" at your image. (and, I am always ok with "argh... that's awful!")

[Diane Miller]

Here's a tighter crop with some Detail Extractor run on the duck and at lower opacity on the surrounding BG -- with more cropping it brings out a lot more tonal interest in the duck. I also ran a very slight Smart Sharpen on the JPEG.

You could do much better with the original file.

[Hazel Grant]

I tried the eyedropper to get a color of the darker ice and then paintbrushes over the bright ice spot. Did it on a blank layer so it would not ruin the photo if it didn't work. Used variations of 10-30% opacity on the brush. I also cropped out the green--personal decision.

[Jack Breakfast]

Thanks ever so much, good birdfiends. Sandy, of course! Please go ahead! I am flattered that you'd want to. This is all very helpful, you kind folks. Many thanks!

[Sandy Witvoet]

Hi Jack...Thanks much.... I don't believe I can do much more than Diane or Hazel have presented... I like both... Diane has kept the feel of the ice with minimal reflections and the duck pops a bit more... Hazel has provided a nice ethereal feel with a nice surrounding, but the "vertical" reflection of the "ice blob" is a bit distracting.