Processing advice please - (final) Edited version added

jgs001

jgs001

Brian Cox
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John
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I took this at Goodwood on Friday, and I really like the tail down, nose up in this shot. I hadn't realised the flagpole was in the way when I snapped it. I can remove the pole with cloning on the grass and hay. Is it possible to process out the bit across the bonnet of the car ? If so how could I do it please ?

Thanks in advance

IMG_1069.jpg
 
To be honest, I think if you clone out the rest of the flagpole, you won't really notice it where it's over the car.
 
I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to see if I could do it. I am sure there are folks here who are a lot better than I am.

Pole_Clone.jpg
 
Thanks Goatee. Hey Preacher, I really don't mind, and it looks like you did a good job too. If you don't mind me asking, what did you do ?
 
I kind of muddled along, trying things? I know, not very helpful!

I started off by using a large clone stamp to get rid of the majority of the pole. Then I copied the nose portion of the car to a new layer and set the blending method to 'multiply' and adjusted the opacity to about 60% and jacked the contrast up.

I used the eraser, set to a diffuse brush and with opacity at 25% to blend the edges of the multiplied layer.

Next, I used the smudge tool, set at 20 (and 50% strength) to smooth the lines of clone stamps, then lowered the smudge tool size to 2 for fine adjustments. I also used the smaller smudge brush to extend the shadow under the car (where I had cloned over it earlier!)

Last thing was some selective blurring to cover up any small areas that looked funky.

It sounds involved, but it was a lot of trial and error.
 
Thanks very much for the details. I'll give that a try out later. I've never even looked at most of those tools before....
 
I'm not sure what they could have done better. . .

Preacher said:
I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to see if I could do it. I am sure there are folks here who are a lot better than I am.

Pole_Clone.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Thanks very much for the advice. I had a go but couldn't get what you suggested to come out quite so well. I'm probably a bit to heavy handed as yet. However, I used all the clone smudge and blur to tidy up. I just started playing with the tools till I found something that did what I want. I'm not 100% certain what exactly to use this for, but the Burn tool seems to have done the trick. Here's my version (I may have overdone the burn slightly, not sure)
IMG_1069-1.jpg
 
jgs001 said:
Thanks very much for the advice. I had a go but couldn't get what you suggested to come out quite so well. I'm probably a bit to heavy handed as yet. However, I used all the clone smudge and blur to tidy up. I just started playing with the tools till I found something that did what I want. I'm not 100% certain what exactly to use this for, but the Burn tool seems to have done the trick. Here's my version (I may have overdone the burn slightly, not sure)
IMG_1069-1.jpg
Click to expand...

Looks good! Only two little problem areas. The haybale wall has some lines that got fractured and you chopped off the shadow under the front.

Great work for a first time!
 
You'll pick it up fella, photoshop is a doddle once you learn the ins & outs. A little tip i've found handy is to duplicate the layer (layers box, right click on it, duplicate) and then use the clone tool on a bigger size than what you might need, that way you wont get lots of little cloned areas, but rather one big one. Then, if anything isn't looking right, you can just rub it away which will reveal the original, un-touched layer underneath. :)

Always work in layers, that way your work is easily recoverable if you make a mess of it.

Hope this helps dude.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. I see what you mean Preacher, I missed those, I'll go back and have another play. Good hint LM, I'll do that when I go at it again.
 
For a first attempt, you've done really well!
 
Thanks Goatee
 
no worries - now just show us more shots :D.
 
Soon, I promise. It's taking me an age to work my way through them.... I shot over 1000 images over the 3 days, I'm soooo glad I'm not having to pay development costs for that lot :D
 
I've had another try, following the advice received using many many layers (can you overdo layers ?) Clone, Burn, Increase contrast (a lot), Smudge, Blur, Sharpen (I've probably forgotten something)

This is what I ended up with

IMG_1069a.jpg


Thanks for all the advice :thumbs:
 
That's great! Looks much cleaner that way.
 
Nice work dude, looks spot on now that.

Layers - You can't over do them as such fella, just that the more layers you have, the more complicated it gets. What I normally do is do a few different things like contrast etc, so I might have 5 layers, then before I do anything else, I merge them, or atleast merge 5 layers into 1 layer, if that makes sense?

You can merge layers to the original layer (background layer) by going to layers > merge visible, or if you have 5 layers for example, you can merge 4 and 3 together by clicking on 4 (because they merge down) and holding CTRL whilst pressing E once. You'll notice the layer will merge down, so the 4th layer is now merged into layer 3.

Hope i've not made that too complicate fella. :lol:
 
The only thing you need to watch is that the background looks obviously cloned. Try to pick a new source for the clone brush now and again to break up the obvious bits.
 
Thanks for the comments and tips, LM, I think I got that. Garry, yes I see what you mean in the crowd. I have an idea for that bit, and I'll try it out later.
 
Following on from Garry's advice, I've fixed the obvious crowd cloning. (I sharpened the original the same, then grabbed that section from the original, pasted it in, a bit of feathered delete around the edges and lines to get them in the right places)

IMG_1069a-1.jpg


Thanks Garry and everyone else.
 
I just noticed that you cut off part of the chin spoiler! It looks natural, but you will run into continuity errors if you have more than one shot of that car :p
 
thanks guys. Preacher you're right, and now I've spotted it to it's gonna bug me... Damn..
 
yes, but it gives it a sporty look!
 
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