I GOT IT!!!!

[vgk1nka1dx]

Hey all, just wondering if anyone would care to give some C&C.

305192

[KarlosDaJackal]

Stand up straight, you are leaned over badly to the left.

[vgk1nka1dx]

Yeah, I noticed that. I tried to see if there was a way I could straighten the photo out in PS. It turned out a little better but not like I would have liked it. What about the lighting and colors.

[KarlosDaJackal]

Colour and lighting look fine to my eyes, maybe a bit too saturated, but a lot of people like it that way.

p.s. i bet a lot of people would clone out that pole that looks like its growing out of the seals head, i only noticed it on a second viewing.

[Vetteography]

Good timing on the shot!

For straightening a picture, hold your mouse over the ruler at the top of the picture (for horizontal adjustment) or the ruler at thel eft of the picture (for vertical) and click. Now drag your mouse (with it still clicked) and you will see a guide line appear.

Place the guide line along a vertical or horizontal element in the photo. Now select all (CTRL+A) and rotate the image until the picture element lines up with the guide line.

The guidelines do not print and can be discarded by using the select tool (the arrow on the tool palette) and dragging them back to the ruler along the edge.

Hope that helps!

[vgk1nka1dx]

Colour and lighting look fine to my eyes, maybe a bit too saturated, but a lot of people like it that way.

p.s. i bet a lot of people would clone out that pole that looks like its growing out of the seals head, i only noticed it on a second viewing.

I'll try to clone it out. I'll have to look it up on how to do it. I'm not too good at PS.

Good timing on the shot!

For straightening a picture, hold your mouse over the ruler at the top of the picture (for horizontal adjustment) or the ruler at thel eft of the picture (for vertical) and click. Now drag your mouse (with it still clicked) and you will see a guide line appear.

Place the guide line along a vertical or horizontal element in the photo. Now select all (CTRL+A) and rotate the image until the picture element lines up with the guide line.

The guidelines do not print and can be discarded by using the select tool (the arrow on the tool palette) and dragging them back to the ruler along the edge.

Hope that helps!


Thanks. I tried to keep the focus on/near it's face. I'll definitely have to try and straighten it out some more.

[Viffer06]

I'll try to clone it out. I'll have to look it up on how to do it. I'm not too good at PS.




Thanks. I tried to keep the focus on/near it's face. I'll definitely have to try and straighten it out some more.


It will be cumbersome to clone the pole, unless you have plenty of time. I suggest creating another layer and use glaussian/motion blur then erase subject (seal) which will give this picture a focus point.

Use this picture as a learning tool. I'm nowhere near an expert or am not trying to pretend like one but if I was taking this shot, I would have use a shallow DOF or try a slower shutter and use some kind of panning motion to keep things simple.

Overall, timing and lighting is good.


Since you have image editing Ok, here's a quick and dirty PP to show what I meant. There are different ways to skin a cat of course:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3097/2861942700_ebc7681032.jpg?v=0

[vgk1nka1dx]

Thanks for the example. That looks really good. The picture kind of pops out at you.

[KarlosDaJackal]

Just on cloning out the pole, you don't need to get rid of the whole thing, just enough that it clears the seals head, and then make it blend in with a bench about 2 rows further back. If my left mouse button was working I'd give it a go :eek:

[vgk1nka1dx]

Yeah, If you can get that going I would like to see that.

[Vetteography]

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f260/preacherspulpit/Touchups/Seal.jpg

[Titus213]

Vetteography - excellent edit but you didn't straighten the image.....:lol:

Neat image too, good timing on the shot and good exposure.

To straighten in CS3 grab the ruler tool (with the eyedropper set), draw a vertical or horizontal line following something in the photo that should be level, straight. I used that blue pole. Then go to Image>Rotate Canvas>arbitrary and the proper amount will be plugged for you. Hit OK and you are straight.

[Vetteography]

I beg to differ!

Look at the vertical lines on the primary wooden pole, and on the blue poles to the left and right of it on the original image. Now look at the lines on mine. Now check the horizontal lines of the roof and the top of the bleachers.

I didn't distort the image to fix the curve, but I did rotate the image to get the major lines vertical.

[vgk1nka1dx]

Vetteography, thanks for showing me what it looks like with that edit, what steps did you take in order to get the pole out of it's head, If you don't mind explaining. If it's too long, would you mind pointing me in the direction I could learn alittle more about this trick? Also, thanks to everyone for the C&C.

[Vetteography]

Vetteography, thanks for showing me what it looks like with that edit, what steps did you take in order to get the pole out of it's head, If you don't mind explaining. If it's too long, would you mind pointing me in the direction I could learn alittle more about this trick? Also, thanks to everyone for the C&C.

In this case, with some nice, repeating lines to assist (The bleacher seats), it was pretty easy.

First thing I did was use the polygonal lasso tool to copy the seals head on to a new layer.

Then I used the square marquee tool to duplicate a section of bleachers to the right of the pole and put that on a new layer. (You now have 3 layers. The top should be the seal's head, the second is the copied section of bleacher, the third is the original picture)

I moved the copied section of the bleachers (layer 2) until it covered the pole. Having the seal head on layer one means it will appear to slide behind the seal!

Once I had it positioned where I wanted it, I used the eraser tool, set to brush and a the brush shape was a diffused brush with a soft edge. I set the opacity of the brush to 33% and carefully erased the edges of the bleacher section in layer 2 to blend it in with the background.

What you have at this point is the seal's head, free of intersecting pole. Unfortunately, if you look at the image, you can see under the bleacker seats to where the pole should be mounted to the ground and it looks like your new pole position is mounted to the seat itself.

So, using the rectangualr marquee again, I copied a small section of the pole and move it so it was positioned under the bleacher seat, in line with the main pole. This gives you the illusion that the pole is behind the bleacher seat and mounted on the concrete, not the seat itself.

To make that bit look more realistic, I used CTRL+left click on the layer icon to select that small bit of pole. Using a Hue/Saturation layer mask, I darkened it and then lowered the saturation (shadowed areas have lower saturation than a brightly lit area).

You need to do a bit of touch up to blend the small section. I zoomed in and used the blur tool, at 25% opacity, to feather the edges just a little bit on the small pole portion.

Flatten the image.

Last, but not least, click on the ruler at the left edge of the image and drag a guide out on to the image. Position the guide along a vertical element in the image. I used the central, wooden pole. I used a second guide along the left-most blue pole (I like multiple guides)

Now do the same at the top of the image and drag guides out to a couple of horizontal features. I used the tops of the back bleacher seat and the roof support.

Select "All", then choose Edit>Transform>Rotate and rotate the image until the picture is in line with your guides.

Recrop the image.

Done!

This all takes a lot longer to type out (and probably longer to read) than it takes to actually accomplish on the image.

[vgk1nka1dx]

Thank you Vetteography. Much appreciated.