Yak 52

[Jamfke]

Our local airport had a "Fly In" to celebrate its 75th year of operations. Of the several personal and commercial aircraft that stopped in was a Yak 52 of the Red Thunder Team. Nice looking bird, but I had a hard time getting any decent shots with all the locals stumbling up to get a look at it. One of the better shots was this one. It needed some minor tweaks to get rid of some passersby, and to liven up its colors.

Here's the before:


And here's the after:


After opening up the image in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, my first task was to clone out the guy hiding behind the canopy on the right. It was simple enough to get rid of his shoulder, but his head was a bit tougher due to the refraction of the canopy glass. I think it came out okay though.

Next, some other folks were standing around toward the nose on the opposite side of the craft. All that was visible was their feet. Another simple cloning, and that was that.

To liven up the colors, I opened up a color adjustment layer and tweaked the levels to suit my needs. Then I used the clarify tool in the contrast/brightness menu to sharpen up the entire image.

[nswphotos]

It came up good! If it wasn’t for your description I wouldn’t have noticed the man in the background, but then the photo is a smaller version online. I like the amendments but would have probably liked a bit more of a blue sky in the background as it’s a bit blown out. Good shot > takes you to the moment that your just about to hop up, jump in and fly away.

[MSidPhoto]

O_O good job dude ..

Keep it up

[Jamfke]

Thanks folks! I will likely continue to tweak on this one some. I'll post here when I do.

[sbunting108]

Good job well done.