Problem with branches

[Richard Stern]

A lot of bird images I take here in Nova Scotia in winter have a multitude of bare branches all over the place, frequently out of focus, and often in front of the bird. Here's a male Pine Grosbeak the other day, with the overall image marred by this problem. I have spent a lot of time trying to clone out a lot of these branches and out of focus blobs, but I don't think I have done a very good job. I'll post a couple of others later, that may be better. Any advice on how to do it properly, or other comments?

(Details - image taken with D300, Tamron 200-500, hand-held, ISO 1600, jpeg fine, 1/2000, f6.3, spot-metered - Alfred, I'll take your advice and shoot in Raw in future).

Thanks,

Richard

[Alfred Forns]

Richard Branches oof in front of the bird are problematic Seldom will you get a pleasing result On back is more forgiving

There are many ways to mask A quick mask procedure will give you the best and fastest results It is involved but after you try it a couple of times will be very easy Your best bet to learn is looking at Robert O'toole's CD Easy to follow and very detailed Has become my favorite technique

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi Richard, the techniques AL is referring to, thanks AL, use simple basic photoshop tools and no clone or healing tools to remove items. the most important feature is that they are all self feathering at approx 100%. This eliminates any edge artifacts common with clone, healing or stamp. Also the techniques will not smooth the noise to make the area look "cloned".
Let me know if I can help.
The CD is available at Birds as art.com

Also you can see: http://aptats.com/ for more info.

Robert

[Richard Stern]

Hi, and thanks.

At the moment I have Lightroom and PSE3 - I've been planning on upgrading to PSE6 for Mac when it becomes available next month - so far this combo. has been adequate for my pp needs, but maybe I should bite the bullet (and my wallet) and go for CS3 instead.

Richard

[Rod Wiley]

Sometimes is you clean up around the out of focus branchs and then just sharpen the branch it will help the image. Rod

[Richard Stern]

Thanks - How did you do that?

Richard

[Rod Wiley]

Richard it's not hard at all. Set your sample to a color thats similiar to the color around the branch and simply clone it away. If you make a copy of the original and clone on it you can always erase any mistakes. Rod

www.rjwileyphoto.com

[Alfred Forns]

Excellent work Rod With even color bg and no texture it does work like a charm Great PS work

Richard do upgrade to the new PSE6 I was reading about a new feature (wild) You take several images of one person (bird should be fine) then select the best features of each It will blend them all together !!!!!!!! Would like to see that working !!!!

[Richard Stern]

Richard it's not hard at all. Set your sample to a color thats similiar to the color around the branch and simply clone it away. If you make a copy of the original and clone on it you can always erase any mistakes. Rod

www.rjwileyphoto.com

Hi, and thanks again. I did set my sample to the sky color and cloned around the branches as you suggested, but you must have a secret that I don't, or something! For interest, here is the original image before I had a go at it - downsized only, no color adjustments, sharpening or cloning.

Richard