editing help

any ideas of how to edit the shadow on the baby elephant and match the color to the rest of him?

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Yes, use the clone stamp with a low opacity to remove the shadow, sampling from the baby elephant's rear end. Then restore some texture with the healing brush, sampling from the less wrinkly areas on the adult.

I started with a curves layer and selected the shadow area only...Adjusted the individual channels to get the color close. (targeted color adjustment)

But since there was 100+ points diffrence in the red channel that left the area without detail charicteristic of the surrounding area.

So then I used some clone stamping on a blank layer in luminosity mode to add texture back in and in color mode to help with some saturation/color and original mask issues I was having trouble with.

The move was a lot larger than I was expecting with the targeted color adjustment's...In retrospect It may not have been the best first move but since that's the path I took I stuck with it.

I was not sure about the black stipe on his back....Seems to me baby elephants may have this? so I wasn't sure if it was a shadow or the way they are.

After I took the time to do this example I realized you do not have Image editing on so I cannot post my try.....You would think As long As I have been around here I would be smart enoufgh to look for permisions before I waste my time! Frustrating......But that's my own fault.

But yes...Clone stamping in variuos blend modes and maybe a targeted curves color adjustment...

But this does raise the question...Why is there a shadow on the tree behind him and not on him! How far are you willing to go in correcting shadows to make it totally beleviable?

Thanks for the advice. I apologize for not turning on 'image editing ok'. I have corrected that now. It was just lazziness on my part. It's starting to look alot better after using the cloning and adusting the colors. just lightening the shadow was not doing it. I dont know why alot of those pictures (which were taken in RAW mode) came out so red. I had to turn the color temp down to 4600 and lower on the raw editor. Maybe it was the Tanzanian sun or the red clay the elephants were rubbing against. Most of the other pictures came out ok at the 5200 K setting. Thanks again for your help. Steve.

I used the healing brush for this edit.

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One approach is to clone from the mother ... or copy and paste a big patch from her and reduce it to make the texture less coarse. I cloned.

On my calibrated monitor, these have a strong red/magenta cast to them.

I also see a pinkish magenta cast....But with no personal expierence of the location found it beleviable that it could be from the late afternoon sun on the location.

Here's my quick mock up with the method I outlined above...Yes it could use a little more attention to detail but as this is to small for any practical use it serves to illistrate my point.

Steve, regarding my personal lament. Thanks For the PM and excuse my snarkyness this morning.....Maybe I should try a snickers and some Midol, I hear it somtimes works for women.

There are already some fine edit's here but since I have this done up I might as well post it...Worts and all.

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Nice job Peano!

rw2 wrote in post #8105399
Nice job Peano!

Thank you.

I cloned a random part of the mommy elephants tummy to the baby. then used a layer mask to clean up my mess

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Thanks everyone. I've been using your advice and starting to get results approaching yours but not quite as good. I took this trip last Sept and still haven't finished editing the 1500 raw photos I came home with. If nothing else, shooting RAW makes this vacation go on and on and on. Thanks again, Steve.

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Neither of your images has an embedded icc profile, but the last one looks very much off in color...

Only took about 5 mins

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