a drastic change

[candleman]

this is probably one of the most drastic 'saves' i've done.

i saw that the original was skew, and the objects behind it were almost exclusivley black.. perfect oportunity to isolate.

first i burnt highlights and mid tones.. then using brush and paint bucket filled in the rest with black.

boosted saturation in flowers using sponge

some of the silver twigs were lost with the paint bucket.. so i filed those in using a 2px brush after sampling a spot on another twig.
i changed the brightness along the edges of the new twigs to make it look a bit more realistic. IE did a few passes over the same twig.

changed levels

straightened.
-when straightening i had a patch go off the page, so i pasted the image to a new black background and cropped it again so i wouldnt end up with a white corner.

before







AFTER

[Junior_co]

You did a great job of taking a shot that was blah... and making a fantastic shot.

If I may suggest though...

Two things:

1. Can you remove the shadow from the lower left corner.

2. Although I can tell it was originally there, and a part of the cake decoration, the brown(ish) looking leaf on the left doesn't look like it belongs there after the PP work you did. It blended into the backround with all the people prior to the work, but stands out like a sore thumb...

Great job..

Junior

[lissykeeper]

WOW! super impressive. It would be basically perfect if you could get rid of that pesky little shadow.

[Mummy2Princesses]

my thoughts exactly junior but thats a great pic and i love what you did with it

[southernbelle]

great pp! That shadow is the only thing I would change...also, did you think about recropping it to eliminate some of the black, If you did that and made it purposly slanted, it could look really cool!

[candleman]

hey, thanks for the comments all!



i'll definatley make an attack on the shadow, and i'll play with a few options for the leaf.

Originally Posted by southernbelle

did you think about recropping it to eliminate some of the black, If you did that and made it purposly slanted, it could look really cool!

? sorry i dont really follow.. do you mean making it look like a "leaning tower of cake"