Gojira!

[googlit]

here's my pic of some Japanese toys from a big collection on display at EPCOT. I played with the color balance, desaturated the distracting bunny-thing, edited out some reflections (I didn't get them all), cropped, and added a touch more depth-of-field blur.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/127/337223778_a03319c85b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/googlit/337223778/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/337223776_2b885489c7.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/googlit/337223776/)

[Gromguitar4]

How did you get rid of the reflections so well? Making a replication of a back ground is one thing that I need to learn and this llooks really well done.

[googlit]

heh... it wasn't easy, and I didn't get it all. I selected the area of the wood that I wanted to recreate, selected the wood color on the left, and filled it with that color (on a new layer). Actually, I made the area a little bigger so I could mask out the edges with a soft brush. I took the healing brush, sampled the good wood on the picture layer, then painted the grain and such back in on the new layer.

Long story short, lots of cloning, lots of healing, and lots of trial and error. I find it useful to have two windows of the same document open, one zoomed out so I can see how it's going to look, and one zoomed way in that I work on. You can open another window for the same document by going to Window > Arrange > New window for ***.

hope that helped some. :D

[steketee]

Nice color work and great job with the reflection (it was worth the effort). The depth-of field is a nice effect, I use it often. I notice the the blur (gaussian?) to the back right and the one in the front left are the same.

I do this a lot too, but I find that in images that have a foreground, mid field and background placing the same blur in the background and foreground breaks the sense of realism (which might be what you want).

I've found that sometimes using different blurs can create greater depth and really draw the observer into midfield. Anyway, just a thought. It's really nice work though and I love the subject matter! Thanks for posting.