I posted this in the nature and wildlife forum and got no response. Should the red leaves be cropped out of the image or should they stay? Original thread here
You've got pretty busy image because of the location of the gator. To reduce the distractions will take some work but I would do the following:
1. Tighten the crop from bottom and the right, eliminating the tree on the right and the vertical portion of the broken branch.
2. Darken the bright, OOF branches on the left.
3. If you have the skill, clone out all of the remaining bent branch that covers the snout. Or at least clone the parts over the snout.
4. Darken the green blades behind the gator.
Quality of images on the Nature forum is extraordinarily high and the volume of images is equally impressive, so dont be discouraged.
To improve, work hard to get a cleaner shot with less overlap of twigs, branches. You might be able to shoot more wide open (didnt check EXIF) to throw foreground and BG out of focus more. You shot at eye level with a nice "profile", so great job there.
Thanks for the hints. I was able to crop the image like you suggested. I also noticed in the original image there is a small bug on the branch with a lot more detail than shows in this image, right where the snout branch intersects the OOF tree in the background.
I have also darkened the foreground branch and the green stuff in the background.
I tried using the healing tool to clone out the branch in front of the snout; but may not have the skill to do that. I tried several different brush sizes for the healing tool, but they all looked too processed. Is there some guide line for brush size in this type of processing; or maybe I am off base using the healing tool.
not a PS expert.
First, make sure you are using the healing tool on a separate dup layer.
Vary the source, brush size to make it less obvious that you are cloning/healing.
You may need to vary the hardness of the brush.
You might also want to mix use of the healing brush with the patch tool to cover larger areas. Re-blend over healed areas to soften the effects, hide unnatural duplication of elements.
Around 10 to 15 minutes. The bulk of the fix was done by inpainting using Inpaint (given away at the Give away of the Day site a few weeks ago (can't download it for free now); hey I cheat where I can). I also used a Healing Selection Script-fu (GIMP) for some parts, but also did some cloning and healing brush work. No one tool or technique ever works for me but one day I will find the magic wand of tools.
