How do you cure a busy background?

[jiro]

In my honest opinion... pluck one out and do an indoor shot! Hehehe. I mean, if it is not that too trivial with the lady of the house (was this taken from your garden?) I would ask her to give you one and do a studio type of shot. Then use a macro lens highlighting the center part of the flower and use the orange petals (the perimeter that you like) as secondary blurred subject. The angle of the shot on the original image is not too enticing. Also, you picked the time of the day where the sun probably is too bright (though it can be controlled by camera exposure). If you have a white umbrella with you, that would make a very simple and effective soft box lighting! (Ding ding! ) If you are spending too much time on a shot... then perhaps there is really something that is not quite right with that. I'd say, it wouldn't hurt to have a second try. Kind regards, Frank.

[FrankMi]

LOL! actually, we have a nice collection of weeds in our garden so when I thought of trying to do flowers, I went to the local Lowe's Home Improvement Garden Center and they let me take flower photos to my heart's content. I'll have to bring one home (for the wife of course!) to play with. Thanks again!!

[Kris V]

I followed this thread and tried some newly learned techniques. I'm still in the process of learning PP and I'm totally new to this forum.
Not sure if this is really an improvement, but I tried.

[FrankMi]

Hi Kris, as this appears to be your first post, Welcome to CiC! When you get a chance, mosey over to the Meet the Members forum, introduce yourself, and let us know what you are trying to accomplish in photography! There as a lot of help available at this site to learn just about anything about photography you would like to explore.

Thank you for the effort! The center of the blossom appears a bit dark to me. You might want to play with lightening it a bit. I try to listen very carefully to Jiro's (Willie) comments as he is very knowledgeable in the PP area. He favors the approach you are using so you are on the right track but with this particular shot, it might not be easy.

I am also new to PP and did not realize the challenges I would face trying to photograph the Gallardia Tizzy. It would have been much easier if I didn't shoot the image in the harsh sunlight and had waited for late afternoon or at least moved the blossom into the shadows. Live and learn. I'm not happy with any of the techniques I've tried to salvage this image and feel I really need to go back and shoot in better lighting conditions to reduce the high contrast shadows behind the blossom then try the PP again.

Sometimes the only way to know if your changes are an improvement is to compare it to the original and ask yourself what you like or don't like about the changes you made. Pick the aspects that you like, and continue to move in that direction. Fortunately, there is a lot of photographers on this site that can offer suggestions for improvement.

[Kris V]

Thanks for the feedback - and the welcome.
I have lurked here for a few months now and finally decided to bite the bullet and register, so I can get some feedback on the PP I"m slowly learning.

[arith]

I had a go; but macro stuff isn't my thing.

[FrankMi]

LOL! I don't think it's my thing either, Steve. About the closest solution I've seen to what I felt might work was Wendy's post #11. I tried a version of that in the mini-competition # 386 to see how others felt about it and it did better than I thought it would.

I'll keep trying and who knows, maybe one day the macro stuff will be my thing!

[FrankMi]

Hard problem with faking lens blur is that it's hard to get gradients to line up with what you would actually have had in the scene (making 3d projections from a 2D image). I just went for Photoshop fake, cropped, and did a circular gradient mask and applied lens blur, using the mask as the depth map. Also converting the jpeg to sRGB helped with the colors for web display.

Hi Kathy, I apologize, aparently I didn't see this post until just now. <red face> Yes, I think the circular gradient mask and lens blur really help and I used that technique in my last attempt to address this issue. When I can get a chance to re-shoot with lower background contrast I think that will be a key element. Thanks!

[inkista]

No worries, Frank! I wasn't offended or feeling left out.

[Shawn O]

I like some of the edits but my thing is to move in as close ( not trying to get a macro shot) as I can and manually focus on the subject with a wide open aperture or try a different angle that helps too.

Shawn O

[FrankMi]

Thanks Shawn. This was my first attempt at using my new camera for close-ups. I only had the normal lens to work with that day. I took quite a few shots that day, much like a bull in a china shop, not really knowing how they would look on the monitor. I really like how much different this blossom was than the others. It's been a learning experience.

[FrankMi]

I thought I'd try a completely different kind of a 'Star Trek' approach. Does it capture your attention?



Into the Maelstorm

[arith]

It certainly does

[bambleweeney]

Something like this with a strong colour contrast (bright red flower .. green background) is often quicker and easier in Photoshop using Channels to generate a layer mask. A little work on the mask with dodge and burn and once done you can pretty much do what you want. Here a quick (and drastic) levels adjustment to kill the background. A few minutes work - not perfect but with a larger file and given these colour differences a simple job.

[FrankMi]

Hi Paul. Channels? I know where they are but I'm not sure how to use them to get this effect.

[bambleweeney]

Ok, Channels 101.
What you want to do is to create a mask so that you can apply an effect on the flower only or the background only. Have a look in Channels - it's right next to layers in Photoshop. You'll find an RGB (a combination of the Red,Green and Blue channels), a Red, a Green and a Blue channel. These are the channels that together make up the RGB image. Looking at the flower I pretty much know in this case that if I select the Red channel then the flower in that channel will be pretty much white (the highest or brightest Red value) while everything else in that channel will be pretty dark (as most of the other colours are green). Looking at that Red channel you should see a bright white flower area and a dark background area so you've pretty much already got a mask that you can apply to something. Copy the Red channel (drag it down to the copy icon or however you like to make a copy) and now we can work on it, normally we need to enhance the contrast - make it more black and white - and thus more useful as a mask. Click the copid Red channel and press Ctrl L, this will allow you to apply Levels to the copy. Adjust the levels to get the maximum contrast possible - bright white flower area and black background. The centre of the flower probably won't want to play as it's not really red and so won't go as white as the rest of the flower as you adjust the levels. No problem, use a white brush here to paint in the centre. While you're at it use a black brush to tidy up any areas of the background that are still showing through as grey or white.
Now we have what will probably pass as a decent mask we need to make a selection of it. On the main menu select Selection->Load Selection (I'm doing this from memory but it should be pretty close). The white areas of your copy of the Red channel will be the selection, not ideal as we really want to work on the background so select Invert Selection in the Load Selection dialog this will allow us to work on the background (the green leaves of the image)
You now have a selection. Click RGB so that you can see the original image and then click Layers as that's where we will be working.
Now to use the selection you've created. Make a copy of the original layer (assuming you only have one layer - the background at this point), select it and click on the Mask icon at the bottom. You should see you copied layer with a mask that contains the black outline of your flower, if it's the other way round - click on the mask and press Ctrl I to invert it. The white areas (the foliage) will be affected by whatever you do next, the black areas (the flower) should remain unaffected. I used a Levels layer here, so with your masked layer still selected add a Levels adjustment layer and make sure you lock it to your new layer with its mask (click on the double circle icon at bottom of the Levels dialog) as we only want to work on you new layer with the mask and not on any other layers.
Drag the levels down and you should see the foliage change (white area of the mask) whilst leaving the flower (black area of the mask) unchanged.
If you need to make any changes click on the mask and use the black/white brush to paint on it. If you press Alt and click on the mask then your image will be replaced by the image of the mask and you can work on it directly with black/white brush.
Give that a try - I don't think I've left anything out but it is from memory.

Paul

[The Blue Boy]

My eyes just fell out.

[FrankMi]

Neat Paul. From reading it it looks like it should work very well. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

[FrankMi]

My eyes just fell out.

LOL! I hope it didn't go quite that far. Sometimes you just have to give up on trying to make it look realistic and try for a artsy Van Gogh look!

[Tyler Dobbs]

This is what I could do in a few minutes, I used layer masks to blur the background and not the flower. It was easier than most pictures because of the color difference.