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Posted on 10/12/06 9:38:06 PM |
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duncangrove
* Posts: 24 Reply  |
Water - help!
Hi I belong to a camera club but am a useless photographer so have to resort to all kinds of manipulation in order to persuade judges to award me a point in print competitions. I confess that Steve Caplin's book has won me all of the marks that I have been awarded to date! This shot however has got me stumped. I want to clone out the "half boat" at the bottom left, replacing it with water. I also want to add another inch or so of water at the bottom of the frame - if I don't the judge will inevitably moan about "the boat havng nowhere to go blah blah blah"! If I can do this sucessfully I might also try getting rid of the three canoes at the top and bringing the grass lower down. I have spent hours with clone, healing and patch tools but have noy been able to achieve anything that looks remotely realistic. The main problem is that the texture and colour of the water changes quite dramatically. Am I being too ambitious and attempting the impossible or is there a technique that I do not know about? If anyone wants the raw file I shall gladly provide it. Whilst I would appreciate help, absolutely no credit will be given for it at the next print competition - well this site has the word cheat in its name so what do you expect?! Regards Duncan  |
Posted on 10/12/06 10:00:51 PM |
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maiden
Golden Gif Gagster Posts: 471 Reply  |
Re: Water - help!
This was a very quick (less than 10 minute) job mostly using the Patch Tool to drag an area of water over the boat then some more delicate Healing Brush and Clone Tool work to remove the remains of the ropes and their reflection. 
- with a bit more time a better image could be achieved |
Posted on 10/12/06 10:25:44 PM |
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rufus
Destructive Demon Posts: 243 Reply  |
Re: Water - help!
Here's mine Duncan, I mainly used the clone tool at low opacity and added a little reflection on the small boats. It took about 20 minutes. rufus  |
Posted on 10/12/06 10:33:57 PM |
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GKB
Magical Montagist Posts: 3883 Reply  |
Re: Water - help!
Duncan, In the time taken to download the image and do a 'fix' both Rufus and Maiden beat me to it. I used a slightly different and probably not so good technique of selecting and then CMD-J ing patches of water and then scaling them to cover the boats. After that I used a layer mask to mask out the parts that I did not want. I left the ropes dangling in the water. If I didn't need urgently to get to bed I would have spent a little more time tidying up. Gordon  |
Posted on 11/12/06 03:18:50 AM |
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mguyer
Incisive Incisor Posts: 799 Reply  |
Re: Water - help!
here is my version. Drew a loose selection around the boats in foreground, moved the selection over adjacent water, CTRL-J for new layer and moved that layer over the boats, cleaned it all up with the cloning tool.  |
Posted on 11/12/06 2:47:06 PM |
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duncangrove
* Posts: 24 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
Wow!! I am impressed on a number of levels. Thank you to maiden, rufus, GKB and mguyer for responding so quickly and comprehensively. I am impressed with the fact that forum members are so helpful and so skilled. Well actually that is not strictly true - I am a bit fed up about it if the truth is known. I have spent the past year reading countless books on Photoshop, I buy dozens of magazines each month and have even attended the odd Adobe and Nikon seminars. I had thought that I was getting pretty skilled but it is now obvious that I am not! I can't even get my darned photo to appear next to my posts! Since you have been kind enough to respond I shall attempt to repay you with my story of why I am not as skilled as I should be. I was at seminar (either Nikon or Adobe) and queuing on the Adobe stand in an attempt to ask a question. There was a long wait and some guy who seemed to just be a fellow visitor came up to me and asked what it was I wanted to know. Well, my question was so highly technical and sophisticated I believed that only the CEO of Adobe would know the solution so I looked at this guy rather askance. However, I did tell him my query just to demonstrate what an advanced user I was. He proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes rattling off three alternative solutions - all good – and also answered several other supplementary questions for me. He seemed to be a very pleasant and knowledgeable guy. As we were finishing the conversation I suddenly spotted his name badge and saw that it read Steve Caplin! I told him how I had copies of both his 2nd and 3rd edition books and how much these had helped me in getting to know Photoshop. (He really is my hero!) I asked him if he had any other recommendations and he very generously suggested Martin Evening's book, which like Steve's I have found invaluable. Steve also gave a very useful and enjoyable presentation at the seminar At my next seminar (Nikon) Martin Evening was speaking between 13:00 and 14:00. At around midday I approached Martin and gushingly explained how Steve had recommended his book and how useful I had found it. I also told him that I had visited the seminar specifically to hear him speak. I was then selected by Nikon to spend an hour photographing six scantily-clad models using one of Nikon’s demo D2Xs fitted with 70-200 F2.8. This session started at 12:30 and ended at 13:30..........! What a dilemma! You can guess which session won and the worse part is that Martin clocked me sneaking-in to his talk half way through - this the guy who only an hour before had been saying how much he was looking forward to the talk. The moral of the story is that during the first half hour that I missed, Martin probably explained how to clone water around rowing boats and had I not been enticed elsewhere I would not now need help from this forum! But I still do!!! You have all now shown me that it can be done which gives me renewed determination to continue. However, I have in the main used the same tools that you guys refer to but with useless results. To quote Eric Morecombe, I am playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the correct order. I obviously have to perform the actions on a high res copy. I am not asking for anyone to do it for me - I genuinely want to learn and do it myself. Is anyone prepared to send me a few screen grabs or record an action that I can follow? It is probably too much to ask and just seeing the examples above is a big help because now I know it can be done, I am sure that if I persevere I shall find the way. I am keen to get on top of this technique because I take a lot of shots at Wimbledon tennis and am always struggling to clone out linesmen etc so as to get a nice clean dark green background. I have been awarded a few points for my tennis shots in camera club competitions. Luckily there is a different judge each competition but someone is soon sure to spot that exactly the same tennis balls features in each of my shots! If anyone is interested, my web site is under construction but if you click on the exhibition link you can see a couple of examples:- www.duncangrove.com. Thank you again! Regards Duncan Grove |
Posted on 11/12/06 7:23:57 PM |
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duncangrove
* Posts: 24 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
Supplementary question please! Maiden says she used the patch tool mainly but this bleeds when I put it near the bottom of the frame or near the boat. Am I meant to clone the edge of the frame with water first or is there a better technique? Regards Duncan |
Posted on 11/12/06 9:47:10 PM |
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maiden
Golden Gif Gagster Posts: 471 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
In regards to using the Patch Tool, yes it will bleed but that's easily repaired with the Healing Tool which is what I did. The benefit of using the Patch Tool was that a large area of water could be copied over the boat at once rather than slowly erasing the boat in small steps using the Clone Tool which will cause regular patterns to appear that spoil the more random look of natural water. The Healing Tool will blend the edge pixels to give a more natural transistion so any bleed that was caused by the patch tool is easily removed. Also when I say I copied over a patch of water in reality I selected the boat with as tight a selection as possible (you can use he patch tool itself to do this or use one of the seletion tool and then click on the Patch Tool) then using the Patch Tool dragged this selection over a clear patch of water and that area is copied within the selection area. The tight selection minimises the bleed but there will always be some bleed which is fixed with the healing brush. Hope that helps |
Posted on 12/12/06 11:42:30 AM |
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duncangrove
* Posts: 24 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. I am tempted to fire-up PS now and have another try but I really should do some proper work! At least Excel doesn't have that pesky patch tool to worry about - just lots of £ signs with a negative in front of them! Having written the above, I have just fired up PS. I think I can follow what you mean but even the centre of the patch become white. I then tried the healing tool and got it much better but I guess I need to use the clone tool to "create a border" to stop the heal tool bleeding also. Do you use soft or hard brush for healing/clone tool in these circumtances? I really must get back to excel - since you have shown such a kind interest I shall let you know how I get on when I have more time to experiment. |
Posted on 12/12/06 2:17:08 PM |
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tank172
ThreeDee Thriller Posts: 692 Reply  |
Re: Water - help!
Hi everyone! Very nice pic Duncan! Regarding the bleed problem...I've discovered what I call a little cheat that reduces the strength of the bleed. So it won't be a bright white bleed on a dark area of the pic. -First, expand the canvas enough to make a decent size border around your picture. It doesn't have to be much. -Then make a new layer and put it underneath the picture layer. -Use the eyedropper tool to select the general color of the area you would like to clone -use the paintbucket tool and paint that color on your new layer -then start using the patch tool. Depending on how much you are cloning, you may need to change the color of the background area to better suite the new area you wish to clone. When you're finished, just crop off the expanded canvas. Hope this helps! Chris |
Posted on 12/12/06 6:47:36 PM |
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duncangrove
* Posts: 24 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
Aha! You guys on this forum are quite devious aren't you? |
Posted on 29/12/06 3:16:44 PM |
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dave.cox
Marquee Master Posts: 518 Reply  |
Re: Water - help!
The method I like to use is very similar to what Tank described, except that after I enlarge the canvas I make a copy of the original photo and position it behind the first copy, and offset so it shows in the direction I need. That way much of the tonal changes remain available as you use clone. Sometimes with something like water, then all you have to do is heal the "seam" that this creates. This is a lot easier than healing at the edge. |
Posted on 09/02/07 2:34:00 PM |
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duncangrove
* Posts: 24 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
Thank you everyone for your help. I am pleased to report that the cheating worked and last night I was awarded ten out of ten for the pic in a print competiton at my camera club. Naturally, I gave you guys no credit at all since this would not be in the spirit of cheating! If you want to see the final attempt please look at the "recent" gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/duncansgrove. While you are there you might take a look at the tennis gallery. Last night I was staggered to learn that the "Focused Rafael Nadal" was the outright winner in the Surrey Photographic Assoc 2007 print comp. This won me a £20 prize which I have told my wife makes my photography hobby almost self-funding! If you look at some of the other shots can you might spot that the tennis balls all look remarkably similar!! Well, they are all yellow and round anyway, so who cares? Thanks again for the assistance. |
Posted on 09/02/07 2:48:35 PM |
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tank172
ThreeDee Thriller Posts: 692 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
They turned out nice, Duncan. Congrats on the award. Here's the corrected link: http://picasaweb.google.com/duncansgrove |
Posted on 09/02/07 3:03:30 PM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 6938 Reply  |
Re: Water - help!
Congratulations, Duncan. Well deserved. |
Posted on 09/02/07 3:12:12 PM |
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duncangrove
* Posts: 24 Reply |
Re: Water - help!
Thanks Steve but..... See the "Caplin I want my money back" message I have just posted in the general forum. You may now want to withdraw your comments! Seriously, it is good to see that you monitor the site and take an interst in your readers - I look forward to investing in the CS3 version of your book soon (as long as my avator has slimmed down by then!) |