Am I getting better?

[bashfulsue]

I took this shot of the Eagle at the Audubon. She has a broken wing and will live the rest of her life at this center. I've been trying to teach myself how to PP. The original was a very bad photo. The background was wooden slats from the cage. The perch that she is sitting on was all shredded to pieces and the overall color was very drab. Also had the faint lines from the wire fence in the foreground. What I did was:
1. selected the all the wood slats and change it to a solid blue. Then I added a very slight gradient to the blue.
2. Then I cloned the only good piece from the perch to fill in where everything was missing.
3. Then I added a texture to the perch.
4. Corrected the exposure a little
5, adjusted the color curve and saturated the color where the fence wires were.
6. I then color dodge her eye to make it stand out more.
7. added a frame.

I'm pretty happy with the results for my first time. I don't care for the lines that seem to show up in the background from the gradient. Just don't know how to get rid of them.

How is the overall PP? Is the comp alright? What should I do differently?

this is a great picture. the olny thing i was thinking is that the blue might be alittle too blue (thats just my opinion). other than that, very nice job!

[windrider86]

I have to agree that the blue is just too much. And there are funny little lines running thru it but that could be fixed by giving it enough blur to remove details.
The one wing seems to have a tiny bit of blue tint to it as well as the areas on the birds feathers. This can be avoided by doing work on a seperate layer and then creating a mask layer and masking out areas that you dont want to shot thru.
Some of the edges aren't quite perfect but overall its a job well done

[DBeck]

I agree with Windrider. You could do a little masking and refining the edges. The photograph of the bird is stunning. You don't want to take away from it with the blue. It's too intense. Other than that, in my opinion, it's a wall hanger.

[bashfulsue]

thanks. I'm trying to teach myself Photoshop. To be honest I have no idea how to do a mask. any instructions on how to do it would be greatly appreciated.

[windrider86]

I dont use Photoshop but will try and explain how you do it in Corel. The steps are pretty much the same.
A mask layer will need to be created over the images you want to "fix" or combine, then the next step will be to click on your paint brush tool and then paint black over areas (on the mask) you want to see from the bottom image. In this instance it would be the eagle. So in essence you are erasing parts of the blue image so they wont show thru onto the eagle.
If you "paint" out too much, never fear. (Make sure your foreground color is black and your background color is white.) paint the areas you goofed up on in white.
I hope that makes somewhat sense

[bashfulsue]

Ok, I've worked on this all day. I had such a hard trying to get rid of the blue. This isn't perfect but I do think it looks a little better. I did lose some detail around the top of his head. It was the only way to get rid of the blue that was there. I know I couldn't make this one perfect, I was basically trying to learn how to use the tools.

[windrider86]

what you might try is to duplicate your image (never work on the original) work on an adjustment layer - saturation. Choose only blue and lower the saturation.
To be honest the first one looks better as the feathers are still intact. sorry