Getting back in the hang of Photoshop

[Skinner]

I just upgraded from Photoshop 5.5 to Photoshop CS a few days ago. Yeah.... That's a heck of an upgrade. Adobe was kind enough to let me upgrade for $169. As I remember in years gone by you had to pay more if you skipped a bunch of upgrades like that.... but I might be mistaken about that. Anyway, WOW. Talk about NEW!!! Lots of old favorites are still in the package but the newer stuff just blows me away and will take a lot of time to get the hang of.

Anyway, I had this shot from a couple of weeks ago that I kinda liked. One problem was there was a huge sign in the window that I really didn't want there. So I broke out the PS CS and started working on it. Here are the results. Please tell me what you think.


BEFORE:
http://bw-designs.fotopic.net/p9413873.html
AFTER:
http://bw-designs.fotopic.net/p9413663.html

[Skinner]

I would have rathered my pics show up here for viewing purposes. But I could not figgure out the right format fore the codes. I did go to the help area but I guess I didn't understand. Any help would be appreciated. :)

[Belmondo]

That's okay, the links work fine.

That's a really great job.

[izzypizzy]

First I looked at one pic, then the other, and I didn't notice any difference.. then I looked at them side by side, and i said "Oh duh!" Hehe, nice job:)

[MDJAK]

Excellent job. Did you use the cloning tool?

I just cloned a person out of a background shot of my daughter standing on a mountain with foliage in the background. It was quite easy as I was only cloning leaves and tree branches.

I'm new here and haven't posted a pic yet but I'll get the hang of it soon.

[Skinner]

I used the cloning tool exclusively. I pulled up images of the leaves and branches and tried to march up the darker areas of the larger branches. I also used a picture of the same scene that had some other tree reflections in it and cloned from that picture to the final one.

I tried using the smoothing tool as well to try to smooth out the repeating patterns but that effected the noise in the area smoothed and it was clearly evident that something was different. I went back to unaltered clone areas and where a pattern repeated I just cloned a little area into it to break up the outline... an old military camouflage trick. :)

I was quite pleased with the end result and the 8x10's I made to see the final effect were really nice.

Thank you all for the compliments. I am enjoying getting back into the use of Photoshop. It really is an amazing tool!