Stop Action, C&C need some feedback

Calina

Hi folks,

I need to do a little survey. Two areas of this photograph have had to be built from nothing using a clone tool. I want to know how obvious it is to other people. So if you're interested and have a look, can you tell me where you think it is. I'm of the opinion one part is better than the other and I'd be interested to see if this matches other people's view.

I know - incidentally - that there is a weird blue line on the left which I will have to go back and have a look at later on this afternoon.

PoleStar

Fantastic shot, very nice!

But yes you can see a couple of shots i think of the waveboarder which ahve been cloned out

Calina

Polestar, can you hop over to Flickr and use the Add Note function to show me what you're talking about because that's not actually what I'm looking for. If you're looking at the area around stop 1 2 and 3, that's unavoidable because he didn't travel far enough.

thanks a million, by the way.

elven

It's the repetition of shapes in the splash that does it.

Have you tried the healing brush or patch at all? Do you get that in elements? I'm starting to use it more and more to better effect than cloning, but it takes a lot of getting used to - very difficult to read about how it actually works... it copies the texture from the other area though and blends it in to the right tones, can be very useful for providing randomness.

Calina

Very good. There is a second one in there though...

Okay, I've the healing brush alright. I've just never used it. As I'm in the middle of another nightmare sequence I'll give that a shot now.

All this came up because there's one in a current kitemagazine and the cloning is really really bad in the water. I mean much worse than this.

drive3331

The shot looks great!


If you where to put a gun to my head and force me to pick the 2 cloned pieces it would be the background beach and the wave splash. Looking closer at the background beach there looks to be patches to the right, near the last shot, that have straight edges that don’t match the surrounding image.. Looking closer through the rest of he back ground you can pick up other patches like that.
The splash looks too good. It seems to have very straight edges near the bottom of it.

drive3331

Elven bet me to spotting the splash

Calina

The straight edges on the splash are caused by it being from the edge of that particular component shot. That's why cloning it is so hard - apart from it being water and water being a nightmare to clone. Most of the straight edges are caused by slight angular differences in the component shots. or in otherwords, they're stitch marks

Regarding the comment about the beach, you're close-ish...it's actually the high sand dune in the top right hand corner which has been completely rebuilt from nothing.

Thanks a million folks though, obviously still have a way to go with these.

ThOnda

The stop no. 3 is good for information, but it covers a lot from other snaps.
Well, some cloning could make it look a little more real, or maybe CS3 (I've started reading textbook about it and the tools are enhanced for this style of shots in there).
I have absolutely no problem with background or water, however some of those figures are hidden and it makes the picture more difficult to "read" for me.

Calina

Yeah, but I've talked about that with other kite photographers and the prevailing wisdom is to use every shot you can...

In terms of reading the shot, what you can read is the route he took through the air. i have a piece on the last one of these I did regarding the changing speed through the air.