Spot the hack :)

[davidd]

My son wanted a picture of the local water tower.

So I did this for him (thanks photobox)

I had to make some rather severe hacks to the picture which I think are reasonably obvious. As you lot don't know what it used to look like can you point out any that jump out.

Thanks

D

[pic]http://www.donnan.org.uk/Misc/Water%20Tower/slides/IMG_2009b.jpg[/pic]

[shadytree]

The Sky, grass and hedge ?

>> Edited by shadytree on Wednesday 31st August 15:26

[Captain Beaky]

Surely there should be a mobile phone mast on there somewhere...?

[jimothy]

You removed the chavs hanging around outside sharing one barcardi breezer between 6 of them?

[chris.mapey]

The hedge & sky, and looks like there's something fishy about the left hand edge of the tower - have you cloned something out?

Nitpicking really, looks great.

Chris

[shadytree]

missing graffiti and the council estate on the horizon ?

[406]

And removed the Grafiti, Pikeys caravans, McDonalds boxes and the rest of the rubbish that the pikeys have scattered all over the place.

[wedge girl]

Lets see the original then

[shadytree]

A white building on the left and a brick building on the right, with a fence behind ?

[shadytree]

[davidd]

lol, Thanks for that.

This is what it looked like after I had made the sky a bit more blue but before I started chopping the image about.



That building on the right hand side was a real pain to remove.

All I need now is to get up the the top to get some pictures from there.



I think it is a phallus thing

D

[shadytree]

Bloody good photoshopping D

[davidd]

Thanks

Funny that in the olden days when I decided to get into taking pictures I found I had more fun doing the prints in a makeshift darkroom than I did taking the pictures.

It is the same with digital, I really enjoy tweaking stuff with photoshop. Pure (if a little sad) fun. I suppose I could buy a decent DSLR and take better photos in the first place

D

[_dobbo_]

davidd said:

Thanks Funny that in the olden days when I decided to get into taking pictures I found I had more fun doing the prints in a makeshift darkroom than I did taking the pictures. It is the same with digital, I really enjoy tweaking stuff with photoshop. Pure (if a little sad) fun. I suppose I could buy a decent DSLR and take better photos in the first place D

The best DSLR in the world can't get rid of a building which is ruining your composition!

I'm the same, love playing in photoshop as much as I love taking pics in the first place.

[te51cle]

shadytree said:

The Sky, grass and hedge ?

But I bet most people wouldn't notice ! To get around the problems of being forced to repeatedly clone from one small area, once I've got the full construction in place I'll go back to it and throw in a few cloned spots from random places in the original to break up any repeating patterns the appear. I also use a fairly hard-edged 'brush' for this kind of cloning to prevent a general soft focus appearence in the area.

[davidd]

te51cle said:

I also use a fairly hard-edged 'brush' for this kind of cloning to prevent a general soft focus appearence in the area.

I'm only just geting to grips with the clone stamp tool. How do you mean hard edged brush? And if you have a hard edge then how do you stop getting a hard edge?? I would have thought that hard edges were easy to see (hence spending ages getting shot of them).

D

[shadytree]

te51cle said:

shadytree said: The Sky, grass and hedge ? But I bet most people wouldn't notice !

I'm not most people





>> Edited by shadytree on Wednesday 31st August 20:44

[te51cle]

Description from Photoshop 7. When you select your clone tool (or erase, paintbrush etc.) you should see a small box at the top of the screen marked Brush: with a small icon representing the current brush and a small arrow for the drop down menu. Click on the arrow and you'll see a large number of options plus a Master Diameter slider. The hard-edged brushes are at the top followed by the soft-edged brushes and a small assortment of effects brushes. Take your pick and play around ! There's even more on offer if you click the right-hand arrow and select from the brushes at the bottom.

I'm not going to describe this next bit at all well... I've discovered this through experience rather than through books or other sources of advice, so it might be best to play around a bit and see if you can work out what I mean ! I found that cloning work using a hard-edged brush was harder to spot on high contrast and random textured areas such as foliage than a soft edged one. Particularly if a soft-edged clone was used to clean up areas in the middle of the foliage. A soft-edged brush tended to put in soft focus bits around the edge of where you cloned giving some odd-looking areas that had obviously been worked on. If you repeatedly clone over an area (e.g. the edges of a previously cloned area as you are forced to do when constructing a large hedge from a couple of bushes) then that fuzziness becomes compounded and you end up with what appears to be an out of focus area in a zone that should be sharp. Using a hard-edged brush left the contrasty leaves looking much more natural and if there were any suspicious areas they could be quickly tidied up with a small soft-edged brush.

Incidentally with PS6 you could create your own brushes with softness variable from 0-100% but I've never been able to find where that feature has gone in PS7. I particularly liked a 25% soft edged brush for cloning with.