Ducks, No Swimming

[Nat]

I had two images and decided to merge them. Not being sophisticated, I did it the easiest way for me. I opened both images, tried to match them color for color, and then erased from the duck image what I didn't want, with a soft brush. Maybe a little cloning and blurring.

[Geoff F]

I'm not sure, Nat, but I just wonder how this would look with the ducks a little further from the bottom; or the pole a little closer.

The idea being to bring the No Swimming notice and the ducks just fractionally closer together.

Certainly an excellent idea.

[FrankMi]

Hi Nat! It looks to me like you have overcome a number of hurdles that often mess up the works when trying to merge images.

First, the composition works well and your efforts with color matching have paid off. Attention to detail has paid off. The ripples made by the ducks merge well with reflection of the No Swimming sign. The shooting angle of the sign and the ducks seems to match as well. There are no obvious lighting direction, intensity, color temperature or shadow differences. And lastly, there is no 'odd' feeling about the image that would give away that fact that it is a merged image.

I would say that you could post this without the background and very few folks (if any) would be able to detect that it is the result of a merger. Very well done IMHO!

[Nat]

Thank you, Frank, for such nice comments....I am blushing!
Geoff, you are probably right....and if I give this another go...I will put those ducks higher up....it is a tall composition as it stands.