suggestions on cloning out other heron on left?

[stuart wanuck]

nikon d300 iso 400
m 1/1000 @ 6.3

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Stuart I like the crop the way it is unless you want to get radical and do away with all but the two birds .. which would look neat !!! ... if this is not full frame would give a little more room to the left bird !!!

Excellent action captured, just the luck of having the right bird twisted but like it a lot !!! ... nailed the exposure and all sharp !!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Stuart, Agree with Al's comments except I would like to see the image without the cut bird on the far left. I feel it's taking away from the overall image...

[stuart wanuck]

found it very very difficult to clone out the heron on the left

[Harold Davis]

best way to clone it: SLOW AND EASY!! i'd do very small sections at a time. would be worth it too. cool action and tack sharp!!

[David Thomasson]

I would go at it this way:

Step 1: Copy a chunk of sky from the bottom right, flip it horizontally, and move it to the bottom left corner. Then clone on top of
that with a soft brush to cover anything still showing from Bird3 and the foliage. So you have something like this ...



Step 2: Put a mask on that layer, reduce layer opacity to about 60 percent so you can see what's behind the cloning, and
paint with black to mask out just the legs of the bird you're keeping. This is considerably easier than trying to clone around
the outside of the legs and feet.




Crank layer opacity back up to 100% and tweak as needed.

[Lance Peters]

My thoughts exactly David - unless SWtuart wanted to leave some greenery in the bottom corner??

Like the action stuart - to be honest I dont mind it as presented - adds more to the story - the repost changes the story somewhat.

[stuart wanuck]

appreciate your comments will make a go at it

[Gail Spitler]

Great discussion. Thanks for posting this and thanks david for the details on his repost.
Gail

[Jackie Schuknecht]

David's repost is amazing. Like it w/o the bird in the LLC. The pose of the bird on the right is great too. Great action captured IMO.

[Alfred Forns]

Wow !!! Amazing David Love to see you work that magic !!!

[David Thomasson]

Thanks, all. Stuart gets major congrats for capturing this action. I chuckle every time I look at that bird on the right, canted over in that off-balance configuration. It's almost like a cartoonist drew it.