Since my update at the end of last year I have been preoccupied with the refurbishment of our new house.
Recently, I have been processing an image to be printed on glass for a splashback in the kitchen. The area is a little over 2m x 0.5m or 6 feet x 1 foot 6 inches. You will not be surprised to learn that the starting point for the image is not my own, but an Adobe stock image I downloaded.
I decided at the outset that I would not use Lightroom for this, but open the original image in Photoshop via Bridge. Thisis not my normal workflow. My reasoning was that this would avoid the to and fro between LR & PS and make it easier to save full PSD files as drafts along the way which would be easy to go back to if I subsequently made a mess of what I was doing at any given time. This was particularly pertinent prior to merging down layers. Also, I won't need thisimage in my Lightroom catalogue.
I first used the recently introduced "Super Resolution" (twice) to quadruple the number of pixels on each axis. Then I used "Content Aware Fill" to extend the image on the left- and right-hand sides.
That resulted in an extension to a horizontal stem of the orchid which cried out for an extra flower bud to be added, so I copied and transformed an existing bud, and changed the size and orientation a little so it it is not an exact clone. As the stem in the image is close to a waterline, I had to create a reflection in the water for both the stem and part of the new bud by cloning various parts of other reflections.
On the left was a rather dominant dark area which was the shaded side of a curled leaf. We felt it was too dark for such a large area so I cloned some of the leaf that was not in the shade and reduced the opacity of that layer thereby adding texture to the area while adjusting the tone to suit.
Some other minor tweaks were done plus a resizing of the image to suit the required dimensions.
I shall have the image printed and check the print carefully for anything I have overlooked and offer it up to its intended position before I commit to the cost of printing it on glass.
The original image and the draft edited version are below. There is very little difference at first sight, but the editing was required to suit it to the intended purpose. A lot effort on my inexperienced part, for little obvious benefit, but the final result will be much better than just cropping and resizing the original - at least I hope so!!
Original:
Edited (draft)