Silkweed and Cattail

BrentC · Mar 2, 2017

Milkweed

Seed pods by Brent Cameron, on Flickr

Cattail

WesternGuy · Mar 3, 2017

Neat shots. My only nit is the OOF branch in the second one. I think I might have been tempted to clone it out, or find another cat tail to photograph. It is very distracting and IMHO, detracts from an otherwise interesting image.

WesternGuy

BrentC · Mar 3, 2017

WesternGuy said:
Neat shots. My only nit is the OOF branch in the second one. I think I might have been tempted to clone it out, or find another cat tail to photograph. It is very distracting and IMHO, detracts from an otherwise interesting image.

WesternGuy

Yeah I thought the same thing. Is that something that can successfully be cloned out? I haven't done any real cloning out yet, only used the removal tool in LR, so maybe I'll practice with this one.

Dean_Gretsch · Mar 3, 2017

We called your " silkweed " plants " milkweed " in Kentucky because of the white milky substance that came out of broken stems. Monarch butterflies love the plant and I could always find their chrysalis hanging from the plants. I like the first photo best because the second is just a bit over exposed for my taste. It is just a matter of likes and taste though. My opinion counts no more than most and much less than the more knowledgeable here. :applause:

BrentC · Mar 3, 2017

Dean_Gretsch said:
We called your " silkweed " plants " milkweed " in Kentucky because of the white milky substance that came out of broken stems. Monarch butterflies love the plant and I could always find their chrysalis hanging from the plants. I like the first photo best because the second is just a bit over exposed for my taste. It is just a matter of likes and taste though. My opinion counts no more than most and much less than the more knowledgeable here.

Yes they are Milkweed and I know that. I have a bad habit of switching out the milk for silk. I've been doing that for years and can't seem to get out of it. Weird. I always think of the silky fibres and thats probably what does it. But thanks for correcting, I'll make the change.

Dean_Gretsch · Mar 3, 2017

I can certainly understand them being called silkweed too though. The dried pods have the silky fibers inside.

WesternGuy · Mar 4, 2017

WesternGuy said:
Neat shots. My only nit is the OOF branch in the second one. I think I might have been tempted to clone it out, or find another cat tail to photograph. It is very distracting and IMHO, detracts from an otherwise interesting image.

WesternGuy

If you have Photoshop, it can be removed with Content Aware Fill. Trying to remove it in Lightroom is a bit more work. It can be done, just don't try and remove it all at once, but in short bits. That way with the Clone/Heal tool you can reposition the part that is filling in if you have to. If you tried to do it in one piece, it would be almost impossible to find an appropriate match to the whole fuzzy part. Doing it in small bits makes it easier to find a match.

Personally, unless you are going to use this as a "wall hanger", or you would like the practice, I wouldn't bother, just take it as a lesson learned. HTH.

WesternGuy

OGsPhotography · Mar 4, 2017

Clone tool in Lr should do just fine. May not get it perfect but what does perfect mean? It'll be better and no one would ever notice.

OGsPhotography · Mar 4, 2017

Press H in Lr to see the clone layers to adjust them. A quicknyoutube search will show how easily.

BrentC · Mar 4, 2017

Picture isn't worth but it was good practice to try my first cloning out in PS. Very cool. It's impressive what it can do.

cattail by Brent Cameron, on Flickr

WesternGuy · Mar 5, 2017

Pretty good, but you have outlined one of the problems with the Clone tool in LR. You now have a sharp line in the image that shows up against the background on the right side of the image. Not sure if you cloned or healed, but here is a video that suggest a way to use both with a complex healing problem - http://lightroomkillertips.com/to-clone-or-heal/ . I have to disagree with OGsPhotography, people will notice. Not everyone will know what it is, what caused the "straight" line, but they will notice things that do not seem natural and that is the secret to good cloning and healing - if it looks natural, then it is more likely not to be noticed by the "untrained" observer.

Did you use a single piece to clone this out? If so, you would be better off using shorter pieces and varying the characteristics of the edges so that they are not all linear - make some with slightly curvy edges and maybe combine short pieces with slightly longer pieces - the overall ideas is not to not make any cloning visible to the observer. To do this, you also have to match the cloned bits to a very similar part of the background and this is not always easy to do. Like so many other aspects of post-processing, practice is the only way to get better.

This is a fairly decent job for a first time, but keep on trying as this is one of those processes that takes time to learn and to perfect. Once you get there you will find this a very useful tool for taking out some bits of you image that you don't like (I do it all the time). It is the best way to remove dust spots in you image, where it is necessary to do so.

WesternGuy

BrentC · Mar 5, 2017

WesternGuy said:
Pretty good, but you have outlined one of the problems with the Clone tool in LR. You now have a sharp line in the image that shows up against the background on the right side of the image. Not sure if you cloned or healed, but here is a video that suggest a way to use both with a complex healing problem - http://lightroomkillertips.com/to-clone-or-heal/ . I have to disagree with OGsPhotography, people will notice. Not everyone will know what it is, what caused the "straight" line, but they will notice things that do not seem natural and that is the secret to good cloning and healing - if it looks natural, then it is more likely not to be noticed by the "untrained" observer.

Did you use a single piece to clone this out? If so, you would be better off using shorter pieces and varying the characteristics of the edges so that they are not all linear - make some with slightly curvy edges and maybe combine short pieces with slightly longer pieces - the overall ideas is not to not make any cloning visible to the observer. To do this, you also have to match the cloned bits to a very similar part of the background and this is not always easy to do. Like so many other aspects of post-processing, practice is the only way to get better.

This is a fairly decent job for a first time, but keep on trying as this is one of those processes that takes time to learn and to perfect. Once you get there you will find this a very useful tool for taking out some bits of you image that you don't like (I do it all the time). It is the best way to remove dust spots in you image, where it is necessary to do so.

WesternGuy

I actually used Photoshop with the content aware fill. I'll read up on it.

OGsPhotography · Mar 5, 2017

LoL. Mostly @WesternGuy Lets change what I said to if its done decently and what I actually said to donin the program mentioned, no one will notice.

@BrentC if the picture isnt " worth", why bother showing us? I think its a fine photo and have a few similar. Cattails all around my area.

Have to practice some but really there are many techniques and it does get easy and you wont make " lines" if you learn a few very simple techniques.

Pressing " H" while cloning in Lr does help try it.

Edit: I looked at this a bit and came back again, I think its a fine first clone job. There are plenty of straight lines in the bokeh already, looks better IMO after the cloning. Played with it in Lr myself. Similar results. I really think people would NOT notice. There are very similar " straight' lines all over that background. Or, was there branches everywhere and they were cloned out and I noticed now a straight line making the original Clone Job, bad