Waiting

[Frog]

Taken during Daffodil Parade in Puyallup, Wa on April 21.
I was looking for people shots and this lady caught my eye.
She is sitting in front of a pawn shop.
I cloned out a price tag next to her face and a cabinet in upper left.
I need more practice with cloning.
What do you think?

[Hickeroar]

Neat idea. I've got a couple thoughts though.

- The clone jobs are pretty....interesting.

I use a clone brush set to an appropriate diameter (depends on the area you want to clone), circle shape usually (square sometimes, when needed), 0 - hardness (gives you soft edges instead of a sharply defined "this is cloned" look), 25-35% opacity, choose an appropriate area to clone from (which will change about 25+ times in any decent clone job), and click carefully where things need to be edited. With that opacity you need to click over any specific area several times, but it blends really well.

It just looks like you just used a selection tool, copied a chunk, and pasted it elsewhere. It took me a second to find where you did it on the pricetag, but now it sticks out like a sore thumb. I spotted the upper left instantly. The idea is to get the image to look like things SHOULD have been that way in the first place.

In the upper left you should have just followed that horizontal line all the way over to the left instead of stepping it up with all those jagged lines. With the weed eater you should have "created" the rest of the foregrand winch with the clone tool, picking things from the surrounding areas to clone in. The weed eater should also have been completed by the same method and the carpeting should have been filled in in the gap between the two. I've seen pictures of houses where people cloned an entire oak tree out from in front of the house so it looked like it was never there, and the house looked completely normal. Stuff like this is very possible.

If you don't have a photo editing program, buy something like Corel Paint Shop Pro XI which runs about $50 -$80 depending on where you buy or what deals Corel is offering. It's definitely the most "bang for your buck."

- The saturation seems a bit high on the face or something like that. The picture almost appears like you tried to raise the brightness and compensate with contrast, but went a little too far.

[Hickeroar]

Here's an example of a relatively basic edit job possible with the settings I provided. Before is on the left and After is on the right.

[readingr]

Frog,

I like the photo, but feel that it would have been better to crop from the left almost to the cigaret butt on the floor.

I really like the expression on her face, I would consider a slight and I mean slight dodge around her face to lighten some of the shadows.

Love the colours

Roger

[Mr Yuck]

Good shot, I agree with Hicke's suggestion about cloning, that blending technique is new to me as well, I just started using it last week but already I wonder how I lived without it ;)

I think a smaller DOF would be good too, or maybe if she wasnt against the window, but this is good as is and some smooth clone jobs would be good. Your perspective and overall composition are great.

[Frog]

Thankyou for the lesson, Hickeroar!
I always want to learn and there's so much of it I need to do.
I will definitly try your method. Might take me a few days of cussing to get it right but if that's what it takes, so be it.

Thankyou, Roger. I actually did try several crops and I think you may be right. The stuff on the left definitly holds little if any interest. Mostly, I cropped out a lot of sidewalk. I actually did try to lighten a bit around her face but I guess I'll have to break down and actually read how to do stuff.

Thankyou too, Mr.Yuck. I was doing a lot of shooting,(for me anyway) and looking at the crowd for pics so had camera set at f/8 throughout as I wanted some pretty good dof.
I agree that some less might have been better here.

[Hickeroar]

By the way, there's a 30-day trial of Paint Shop Pro XI on corel's website. I own version 8 and I'm trying to decide if there's anything in XI that would be worth an upgrade... Haven't found anything thus-far. There are very few new USEFUL features in anything past version 8. Obviously if you're buying new, you should buy XI.

[starriderrick]

This is a good candid shot Frog.
Alot going on in this image.
The woman has quite the expression.Did she know you were shooting her? Good colors.Interesting items in the store window.I think... Crop it at the cig on the left. That's it.
This shot keeps me looking at that winch setup. haha. J.K. It's a Jeep thing...

Rick