Football - PS too much?

[carlina999]

I like this shot, but because of the 'busy' background thought it needed some help. (chain link fence and sideline clutter).

In PS, I modified the DOF and deleted a inconvenient pair of legs plus some basic cropping. Is this too much? Does the shot look less 'natural" because of these modifications?

Any and all comments are welcome.

Thanks

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After





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D300
1/3000 @ f4.8
ISO 400
135mm (80-400 4.5/5.6)

[cphoniball]

Nope, not too much . The shot still looks perfectly natural to my eye, at least without inspecting it too closely. As long as this is meant for artistic and not journalistic purposes, deleting the legs is perfectly acceptable.

[milosh]

I agree, it looks much better than the first one. The focus is now strongly on the players, without the background interfering. And those legs, what a coincidence that they ended up there.

[KansaiGreenie]

Hi carlina999,

Wow! Good job! I honestly thought that the first image is what you shot and then cut out the players and added a new background. This is well done.

If you would allow me to nitpick... when you took the legs out, you also took out the supports for the bleachers, so now there is a 'hole' that looks unnatural. I would try to add the supports back in or be more careful about not taking them out. But again, I think that is nitpicking. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't seen both images.

I think you did an awesome job. I couldn't do this as well as you did.

KG

[Hartzler]

It's well done. If I hadn't known you altered the depth of field in post production, I doubt I'd have noticed it. Kansai has a great eye. I didn't notice the hole when I first looked. I definitely think removing the legs was the right thing, they look out of place. But now that I know the hole is there, it's an obvious giveaway that the photograph was altered.

Good shot and the DOF change puts the attention right where it belongs. If I were being critical, and you probably did this, I'd have played around seeing if a bit less blur would have worked. But it's a nice capture and good processing.

[carlina999]

Thanks for all the comments. Much appreciated.

KG - I agree, I thought the hole from the leg removal looked out of place too, but I thought I was just being picky since I was working on the picture and knew the before/after. Good to see that it was noticed.



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