Please help a PS ignoramus

[bobt]

I hope someone can help me without making me feel too stupid :rolleyes:

See the tree trunk reflections rougly outlined in white in the attached image. I want to get rid of those reflected trunks, but I want to keep the rippled look of the water because I think it'll look more natural.

I've tried selecting some rippled areas, duplicating by copy, and moving. That works, but I've not been too proficient at cleaning up the "joints." I didn't think the healing brush or clone tool was very efficient.

So - anyone have an idea about how I can accomplish this relatively smoothly so it looks good?

I have PS 7.

Thanks -

[Marcel F]

Bob ,
use the patch tool Page 149 of the Photoshop CS book ..
I play a little bit with your picture ... kust to show what can be done . Your white border created a problem , I had to stay within your marks.

Regards

Marcel

:cheers:

[Tom V]

Bob,

I used the Stamp Tool with a semi-soft brush, with Align checked [x], to remove the mysterious white line, then to remove the tree reflections by replacing them with cloned reflections. My brush was about 1/3 the wavelength of the ripples, and sampled from either the left or right on the same ripple I was Stamping over. To feather some of the more abrupt stamping edges, I reStamped over, using a slightly different sampling point, and with 50-80% opacity.

I used the Healing brush to remove the distracting water surface gunk in the bird's reflection.

I rotated the image based on a line drawn from the bird eye to the eye reflection.

I find the Healing Brush sort of difficult to use along edges of things with a much lighter or darker edge (such as each ripple), although it can be done.

:beerchug:

[toners]

Nice work, Tom. Your head seems remarkably clear and hand stready considering the day of the year.

Must be that chaser - think I'll try some, too. :beerchug:

[calcruiser]

I couldn't resist playing with the clone tool a bit. I've found that one of the tricks to the cloning tool is to not get to heavy handed at it and reduce the opacity to help blend items together.

[bobt]

Thanks for the comments everyone. I think the comments about opacity were the most helpful. I spent about an hour on it last night and it looks pretty decent.

Unfortunately, it's not quite sharp enough. This was with the 80-400mm VR + Tamron 1.4 converter - manual focus. The body looks great, but the eye is just a bit out of focus.

That's too bad, because I think I definitely captured a definitive moment here, at least if you like fish! But the eye needs to be just a bit sharper to be worthwhile, I think.

Thanks again - :cheers: