Photoshop :: Spot removal

I make it no secret that I'm an amateur photographer. I've been taking photos "professionally" for over a year, but I still count myself as an amateur because I am always learning about new photography aspects and techniques. (There's a bit of a paradox in my way of thinking because I also believe that no one is a master of photography. Photography, like any art form, continually changes and evolves, so by that extension of thinking - Photographers are always learning. But I'll save that rant for another time.)

As some of you know, I finally got myself Adobe Photoshop. Up until this point I have used various programs and the "get in right in the viewfinder, not on the screen" mentality. Well, do I ever wish I had invested in photoshop earlier!!

My photo editing skills and techniques have jumped in leaps and bounds in the last month. I try to keep my edits simple thought, so I'm not sure that you might notice without seeing a straight up comparison.

So, while editing photos from a shoot from September I came up with the idea for a little blog post about the subject. The photos below are exactly the same except for one aspect. During the shoot the vehicle on which my subject was sitting was very hot to the point it was painful for her rear end. So she sat down on a cloth she happened to have in the SUV at the time.

Well, in the bright light of the sun I didn't notice how visible the cloth was. (A bad move on my part, but I'll admit, I felt a little rushed because we had asked a couple to move their car out of the way while we snapped off these photos.)

Now before I got photoshop and went to class, I would have had 2 options. Leave the cloth as is or use a brush tool on the cloth while hoping and praying that it the brush colour matched the various colours on the SUV, including the shine. It would have been an agonizing minimum of 45 minutes on each photo.

But now, in under 20 minutes I have a much more presentable photo.

So the photo enthusiasts (or photonerds as we call ourselves) are probably wondering what tools I ended up using to edit the cloth out. I used the lasso, brush, burn, feather, patch and clone tools in order to hide that sucker.

Now I'm no photoshop wizard, that's for sure. After all, if I was you can bet I would look 20 lbs slimmer in my facebook profile photo! But photos are definitely getting a lot more TLC here at the WSG nowadays.

Until later! Thanks & Shutter Clicks!