This image presented more problems than I thought, and I almost gave up on it, but I think I got mostly what I desired. This was taken at the Chicago Botanical Gardens on a day that was just a little too windy, so I could not use focus stacking to insure sharp focus throughout. I used LR to to lower the highlights, and add texture, clarity, and vibrance, followed by cropping. I also used the Masking Tools to darken the flower and brighten the two bees. But do to the wind, I found that the picture had a lot of soft points, the worst being the side flower that went off the side. In PS, I did some heavy sharpening using Topaz Sharpen AI, darkened some edges, and then attempted to remove the annoying side flower. Using Content Aware turned out to be a nightmare, and I finally gave up. I ended up copying the bottom leaves, putting them on a higher layer, distorting them to fit, and then masking in what I needed, leaving the bottom portion of the flower, which was sharper. I like the lighting on this, but I am not sure if I got the sharpness to an acceptable amount.
420 mm, ISO 640, 1/100 sec at f16
5 comments posted
Kirsti Näntö-Salonen
Hi Bob, I think that the end result is worth all the trouble. The sharpening has worked amazingly well. - I wonder if you could actually remove all of the second flower and paste some leaves in its place? It would not be botanically correct, but I think that it might calm down the background and bring the lovely flower and the bees out nicely? And you would be able to crop it just a bit tighter, too? Posted: 09/03/2023 13:41:58
Mervyn Hurwitz
My eye is immediately drawn to the eye of the top bee and this is reasonably sharp. I prefer Kirsti's crop eliminating the lower flower. I think the colors and lighting make this a worthwhile image. Posted: 09/07/2023 14:24:20
Tony Au Yeong
Hi Bob, I think you have performed a good job in sharpening, adjusting the tones, colors and removing the flower buds. The resulting image has more details, vibrance and contrast. I don't mind leaving the few flower buds on the left side, or removed them is also fine to me because they are only a tiny element. Posted: 09/07/2023 22:57:28
Anges van der Logt
I think the resulting image is already a great improvement to the original image and needs no further work on. My eyes are drawn to flower and the bees in the middle, and the left over flower buds are fine to me. Great image! Well done edit too.. Posted: 09/11/2023 22:51:24
Jose Cartas
The cropping made the bees prominent, which are not easy to find in the original. For the rest, all your post-processing worked very well, and it is not noticeable in the final version, including the cloned leaves. I like the composition, with the contrast between the pink of the flower and the green of the leaves. You managed to get two dark triangles on the upper left and lower right corner, which brings the focus to the main subject. Posted: 09/19/2023 17:06:33
