Wibbly lines...

... and wobbly shadows

[finished image on my [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1350336]Kinda Horrigans[/url] journal]

This image is one which I kinda hope no-one will look too closely at the finished version as it's a bit of a 'spot-the-difference' job to see what's missing from the final shot. The main bit of editing here was in cloning out / using the patch tool in Photoshop to get rid of a post which, annoyingly, broke the shadow line. And an annoying power cable to the right hand side. Sometimes, to get the shot you want, you have to compose it with post production in mind - and turn a blind eye to the annoying bits.

To get rid of the post which was tangled in with the shadows, I used the patch tool, where you select an area you're going to use to cover the destination bit, then patch, aligning the shadow lines as best you can. For areas like the sky, then a nice big brush set to around 80% opacity will help you subtly remove bits from large patches of sky. The main thing to watch for is unnatural repetition when you're cloning. Repeating edges of things, the same bright bit of foliage repeated, subtle tonal changes awkwardly layered. Sampling from a range of areas helps with the repetition problem and using a large brush / lowering the opacity helps with the others.

The other thing this has had done is a slight tweak of the tones to bring out the golds - so I used a warm colour fill layer set to soft light blend mode... and finally a bit of dodging and burning to emphasise the shadows ever so slightly.

Then, flatten and save.

Tip of the day:
Not really a tip, but if you fancy seeing 'Photoshopping gone bad' including some great cloning disasters then Photoshop Disasters will bring you a little sparkle of joy!