some advice

Took this photo of a Seahorse in the Swan River...

and then cleaned it up in photoshop CS to get rid of the back scatter and brighten it up a bit and change the contrast....is there anything else that can be done to improve this ? This was my first UW pic using Oly 5050 and internal flash

Hi,

Can't see the photo.

Cheers

James

I'm no expert but it looks good to me. Maybe you could fix the dent in the belly... How long did you spend cleaning it up?

Thanks, I can see it now. How long did you spend cleaning it up, holy cow, you cleaned up EVERYTHING.

Cheers

James

that was my response in the other thread he wrote in ... its amazing isn't it .... i want to send him 500 of my photos

How did you do it? Clone? Paint a new background?

Joe

Impressive cleaning work.

I don't see much improvement in the post processing, only cropping a little a bit.

What can be better next time is not to cut the poor horse :wink:

Thanks guy for the comments - guess what i want to know from the Photoshop experts is there any rule of thumb to follow when cleaning up pics or is it merely just play around and see what you come up with, which is pretty much what i have done.

Took about 30-40mins to clean it up and i used the clone tool for the job and also made some adjustments to brightness/contrast.

Sometimes the clone brush is dangerous and the healing brush works better. Not really a problem with the black backgrounds where I prefer the clone brush, too. You might try an application of USM with a small percentage (say 20) and a large radius (25-50). You might first apply shadows/highlights to spread out the dynamic range. I generally do this with all my uw photos.

I think you might have clipped the blacks a little too strongly as shown both by the lost detail in the bottom and the slight oversaturation IMO. This is a taste issue, though. With practice you should be able to remove backscatter like that quite quickly. I start by setting my blacks. Then in this case I might try generating a selection to cover most of the black area. Once done I use the levels control to make it all black. In 30 seconds the bulk of the backscatter not immediately near the subject will be gone.

In this image I'd be tempted to try to clone in the clipped back of the second seahorse. It's a lot to ask though. If you could the image would be improved. I never do this with mine though.

Of course, once you've gotten black entirely around your subject you can reframe it at will. Didn't think to do that but it's obvious.

Hi guys,

Maybe I'm a purist...oh no..one of those FILM people! But doesn't the exaggerated colour bother anyone just a tad? The lovely soft pinks were just fine. The backscatter cleanup looks great. While you're adding the back on to the seahorse, you might just add the back to the coral you have at the left, too. The cropped edge is a little too obvious. Then again, you could add wings, and a chariot....ok, I'll shut up. Great shot...took me years to get a sea horse, and I chopped its nose off, so well done!

Actually, I did add back some there, just not carefully enough. If I'd had the full res image I'd have been more careful. This was just a demo.

Yes, the oversaturation is a little much for my taste. I think it's fine though.

A year from now I won't remember that I cloned the back onto the 2nd seahorse if I did it right. Would anyone suspect it looking at the result? If not, what's the problem exactly? Are images to please the viewer or to show off the prowess of the shooter? What is it that a photographer is trying to accomplish? For me, it for my viewers to say "Wow!". I try to do my best every step along the way, but in the end I don't care whether I fixed something in PS or not so long as the final result is good. It's common for me to recrop and clone in negative space (hopefully all black) but on rare occasion I'm willing to touch up a subject in this manner. Usually I'll have taken another without this problem though.