Clone out Shadows? or Not?

[CourtneyAK]

Just got my first editing program...and I was wondering.. Do you typically clone out Shadows or not? This photo isn't anything special, was just using it for practice.



oops and now i just noticed...they aren't the same photo. (but you get my drift)

 

[Mully]

Just make friends with your shadows Shadows can be an important part of your photo

 

[Michael79]

What program did you get? I agree that shadows can be important to a photograph.

 

[CourtneyAK]

Using Photoscape for now, for some reason Photoshop and my computer aren't liking each other..

 

[Michael79]

You could try gimp from google, they make a good software and there a lot of tutorials for it on the web.

 

[deeky]

When putting composite pieces together, people actually add shadows in to make it more realistic. Without them in the first shot, the horses look like they are floating and photoshopped in. Unnatural to me.

 

[christop]

You could try gimp from google, they make a good software and there a lot of tutorials for it on the web.

You give Google too much credit (they didn't make the Gimp).

 

[Michael79]

My apologies I was thinking about picasa, but regardless gimp is great.

 

[flow]

I use Gimp & like it I also have FastStone (because it can read my raw files - I use it for editing as well, but got it so I could convert the files to something Gimp would accept). Both were free to download.
I'd leave the shadows - they're supposed to be there so it looks wrong without them.

 

[invisible]

Shadows help provide depth to photos. They are also hints of the time of day a photo was created. Unless you have a compelling reason to clone them out, being it artistic or simply because they ruin the photo, there's really no point in cloning them out.

That being said, you did a pretty good cloning job. But, like deeky said, the result looks unnatural.