Many people made suggestions. GrumpyDivers's vignette suggestion puts it over the top

[JBW]

[pnodrog]

That's better - you have removed all the distracting and confusing elements out of the background.

[JBW]

That's better - you have removed all the distracting and confusing elements out of the background.

thanks. There is nothing quite as rewarding as a successful learning curve. Some brush work in Gimp, vignetting in rawtherapee and it finally comes together.

[bnnrcn]

I think I missed the first version but this one looks very nice

[Manfred M]

Brian -something I do with almost all of my images is:

1. Set appropriate black point, white point and mid-point values; and

2. Apply a vignette (usually very light, but sometimes quite heavy) to reduce the impact of subject matter in the corners of the image and direct the viewer's attention to the centre of the image. I don't know how Gimp does this, but I usually out the vignette in a separate layer and then use a layer mask to ensure that the vignette does not bleed into the main subject.

[JBW]

Brian -something I do with almost all of my images is:

1. Set appropriate black point, white point and mid-point values; and

2. Apply a vignette (usually very light, but sometimes quite heavy) to reduce the impact of subject matter in the corners of the image and direct the viewer's attention to the centre of the image. I don't know how Gimp does this, but I usually out the vignette in a separate layer and then use a layer mask to ensure that the vignette does not bleed into the main subject.

The black, white and mid point are easy though I have yet to play with them. Vignetting in Gimp is hard to do I usually use rawtherapee for that and transfer in 8bitt Tiff.