Get in my BELLY! Major PS, how did I do?

[Jim Poor]

I'm trying to hone some of my PS techniques so I thought I'd take a neat, but problem image and try to rescue it. I'll post the main original in a follow on.

BTW, the dragonfly lost.

This image has been extensively modified in Photoshop. Any suggestions on what could be done better and how?

First I added a lot of blank canvass left and right.
Then I added the ducks tail from another image to one side and the tip of the dragonfly's wing, copied from the opposite wing of in this image, to the other.
I also extended the D-fly's perch toward the water.

I used Robert O'Toole's APTATS techniques to do those bits.


Then I set to work getting rid of all the OOF junk in the water and specks from a dirty lens. That was pretty tedious. I used a combination of APTATS techniques and the patch tool for this, There was very little clone tool use.

Then I blurred the water surface first with the NR filter and strong settings, then with a light Gaussian blur.

I sharpened bits of the reflection that got cloudy with the blur (should have masked them out first).
Then I went to work on the actual eye and did a targeted curves adjustment, saturation boost and a bit of sharpening.

Made a multiplying layer for the white patch around the eye to tone it down a bit.


The rest was standard resize, sharpen.

Camera Make: NIKON CORPORATION
Camera Model: NIKON D2X
Image Date: 2006:08:16 12:46:23
Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 600.0mm (35mm equivalent: 900mm)
Exposure Time: 0.0020 s (1/500)
Aperture: f/4.0
ISO equiv: 100
White Balance: Auto
Metering Mode: Spot
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

[Jim Poor]

Here's the original.

[Alfred Forns]

Jim the PS work is very good Particularly with all the cloning you did Lots of times the area looks washed out and dull Here it is fine

Doing this much is a labor of love Good to do once in while to none skills !!! btw we are working on pacing the images next to each other Will be much more convenient Glad you came up with this one Jim Will be helpful in seeing what can be done !!!!

[Jim Poor]

Doing this is also a good way to motivate yourself to get it right in camera! This took a about 6 hours to get right.

[Harold Davis]

i think it looks great, jim. very nice PS job!!

[Andy Nelson]

Whew that was a lot of work but the end result is very good. I love the tense position of the duck!

[Craig Markham]

Jim --
You can almost see the crosshairs in her eye. You caught her in a very focused moment. Nice (big) job cleaning up the original!
-- Craig

[Steve Canuel]

Excellent work Jim. The less than perfect images are made for the days and nights when you're unable to get out and take pictures. Nice capture too.
Steve