C & C Welcome

[HellKat Photography]

This is an image I took at a local car show and then played around with it in photoshop to get rid of some of the background noise from people and buildings. I would love to know what you all think.

Original
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3153/2643396401_ec797cbdae_o.jpg

Photoshop Edit
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3087/2644224288_1a93361fb7_o.jpg

[Robert_Lay]

I think it is much improved and that most of the work done on the sky was very creative and effective.

Unfortunately, it is much too obvious that the clouds are faked, because the mid-ground just ends suddenly and the clouds just start suddenly and there is a 1 inch gap between them that is noticeably unnatural. The clouds need to be less and less distinct as they come down to meet the ground and the ground needs to become gradually less distinct as it comes up to meet the clouds.

[Lonnie]

Your edit was time well spent. I agree that the clouds on the left look a tad faked, but some of that may be that I saw the original. Good shot.

[Clare624]

What a difference! You turned this into a keeper for sure!

[LeuceDeuce]

Quick edit.
Remember that when you're going to use the clone brush to continuously sample from different areas. Nothing says "cloned" like repeating patterns.

If it was my shot, I would extract the car and grass, and just composite in a new sky. Should be a much nicer end result.
_

[Walczak Photo]

Aside from the clouds issue that has already been addressed, there's also some distortion around the edge of the driver's side front tire there (from the cloning process perhaps?) and the "horizon" behind the right rear tire doesn't look quite right either (there's some unnatural softness there). I also don't care for the desaturation here either...I think the green grass offsets the grays and blacks of the car quite nicely...but that's just my personal taste.

I have to agree with Deuce in that I would have just comp'd in a completely different sky. Sky's are probably one of the easiest things to comp (IMHO) because it's always there to go and get a decent picture of (same thing with grass)! LOL!!! This is just strictly my opinion here as always but when I'm doing composites of this nature, my philosophy is "if I can tell, chances are someone else can too". My goal with comps is to have people say "Wow...you really can't tell"...it's the greatest compliment I can get about my work.

I'm not trying to be mean or rude here but to me it looks like you spent all of about 10 minutes working on this shot. In my mind, there are no short cuts to a good comp. To use an automotive analogy here, if you were waxing this fine hot rode, yea, you could just take it to a car wash and "hot wax" it, but it's not going to look the same as it would had you of taken the time and did a good hand waxing and detailing job (getting all the wax out of all the nooks and cranny's). If this had of been me, I would have spent at least and hour or so with the image really blown up on my monitor so I could see these tiny little details (I'm often working in the 3 pixel range with many of my comps)...the details are, after all, everything. This could have been a really great shot but to me it looks like you took the "fast and furious" route instead and the image suffered for it.

Just my $.02 worth,
Jim

[LeuceDeuce]

Jim, I couldn't have said it better.

This image, IMHO, is definately worth taking the time to comp in the new sky with great care and detail. Cloning just won't cut it.