Early PP Atempt

[skidmark]

G'day all,

I'm a novice when it comes to any PP, at the moment I'm using a trial version of Lightroom 4. I've been editing a few shots from the other day (they can be seen in the newbie CC threads). I wanted to post up a before and after of a shot and get some CC. I also need help with trying to clone / heal the ugly black spot in the top corner. So far it's very obvious where i have patched it and it stands out almost as much as the black lol. Any help or if you would like to edit and then show me please feel free.

BEFORE
http://i1256.photobucket.com/albums/ii499/skidmark_steve/Photography/Jes.jpg

AFTER
http://i1256.photobucket.com/albums/ii499/skidmark_steve/Photography/JessicaattheBeach.jpg

cheers,

Steve

[soulman]

Your PP has definitely improved the image, which is not necessarily easy or guaranteed - well done! I can't see any evidence of cloning out the black near the top left corner; it looks exactly the same to me. You need to set the tool to be larger than the area you're cloning - I find it's usually best to do big stuff in a few goes, but you still need to cover more than just the area you want or you get halos - and take your sample from an area that is what you want it to be. After you click on the area you want to clone, you can move the circle it is cloning from. In this case, I'd go to the right, staying near the top.

I would also consider cropping it to a 4 X 5 ratio. This will get rid of some of that dark area anyway.

No matter how good your PP is though, you can't escape the fact that this image is not sharp. I would have shot it at ISO 400 and used the 2 stops to give an exposure of perhaps 1/250 sec at f/8 or so. The higher shutter speed means less chance of camera &/or subject movement and the smaller aperture means that more of the child would be in focus, which I think you've missed here. The downside is more noise, but Lightroom has excellent noise reduction and a noisy image is almost always better than an unsharp one.

[skidmark]

Thanks Soulman, I appreciate the help and tips. Sorry if my post was not clear - I have attempted to clone the spot out, but not in the above uploaded photo. I was not happy with the cloning so I didn't upload any photos with cloning, just some setting changes. Thanks for the advice on settings :)