BORDER PATROL

Here is the image as shot. The image is going to end up being an print face-mounted to acrylic without a frame, so we are not concerned with edges that might be covered by 1/4 " of frame. Everything shown will be seen.

Our initial problem is to crop the image to correct proportions. You may have a print that you have already processed and now a client wants a print in different proportions. This happens to me all the time. The biggest problem in choosing how to crop this image is the palm locations. It would be a bad idea to crop off a base of a palm and have it growing in from the side. It is also easier to remove distractions when there is not important detail around the distraction.

The preferred crop is a shown. It is easy enough to remove the palm fronds in the sky on the upper left. Also, this crop selection avoids having a small portion of the right distant bunker (sand trap) encroaching on the image. It does present other issues, however.

The edge distractions have been labeled:

1. Lonely palm fronds in the sky on upper left.

2. White patio wall and stake.

3. Slightly bright lower left corner.

4. Bright bunker

5. Dark spot on edge of bunker

6. Bright condo wall, eave and patio wall

7. Dark palm fronds 

As you make your corrections, the recommended technique is to duplicate your layer (Command J for Mac or Control J for Windows) prior to making the changes. You then either save the file with all the layers, which makes for large file sizes or you can merge layers when you are comfortable with the changes AND save your file under a new name since you may want to go back and edit the image to different proportions later.

1. Lonely palm fronds in the sky on the upper left

To begin, choose the Polygonal Lasso Tool in Photoshop. Surround the entire area staying within the sky. It is okay (even preferred) to go off the edge. The select Edit/Fill and choose the Content Aware selection. Photoshop will attempt to fill the area with surrounding information.

If you have very large distractions like this on the edge of your image, you may find it best to repair small areas at a time. This is the technique I use say for a long branch hanging into the sky.

It is possible to use the Edit/Content Aware Fill selection, but for the sky this often ends up with contrasting areas. This may work better with details inside the edges. It is also possible to use the healing brush in LR, PS or ACR, but this works best with small areas and the amount of feathering you select can affect the quality of your result.

3. Slightly bright lower left corner

To keep the viewer's eyes from going to the lower left area, use the Linear Gradient tool in LR or ACR. Here I have intersected the tool with Luminance Range and refined that range with sliders to accurately refine the luminance on the lower left.

4. Bright bunker

The lower front area of the bunker draws too much attention. Note that a similarly bright area farther into the bunker draws the viewer toward the green. We don't want to completely eliminate the front bright area as it can be a starting point as we move into the scene, but we want to diminish it. 

Here, a Radial Gradient intersected by Luminance Range in LR or ACR works well.

5. Dark spot on edge of bunker

There are a number of distractions in the bunker which could be repaired with Edit/Content Aware Fill or Edit/Fill/Content Aware. This is a matter of personal choice. There is one dark spot near the edge that is a bit annoying. 

In LR or ACR use the Healing Brush (Heal setting) to select the dark spot and adjust the selected cloned area as needed to achieve a fairly seamless blend. 

For extremely challenging areas, you may find that using the Stamp tool in PS or the Clone setting for the Healing Brush in LR or ACR gives the best results. Be careful that you are not cloning an area that is clearly a duplication of another area in your photo as this can be embarrassing if noticed by the viewer.

6. Bright condo wall, eave and patio wall

These areas are a bit distracting, especially the wall. My preferred technique is to use the Radial Gradient intersected by the Luminance Range in LR or ACR as was done for the bunker in step 4. In this case, it was done in two steps, the back wall before the eave and patio wall, to maintain maximum control.

An alternate technique is to use the Burn tool on the highlights at a low setting, perhaps 2-4% and brush over the areas. 

Again, preferred technique is to do each of these steps on a new duplicated layer or blank layer that picks from the layer below.

7. Dark palm fronds 

Our final repair is done to remove the small area of encroaching dark fronds on the upper right. Dark distractions are not as annoying as light distractions, but they should not be overlooked. The most common areas for dark distractions in landscape photography are rocks in creeks or lakes and tree branches or leaves in the sky.

Here, the Healing brush has been used again, although you may be able to effectively use the Stamp tool or Edit/Fill/Content Aware to achieve excellent results.

Our cropped and finished image is clean and free of edge distractions. At this point you may find additional areas within the image that are annoying, such as rough areas in the bunker or the grass that intrudes on the lip of the bunker at the lower front of the image. Now is the time to go back and improve those items if desired.

It's still not time to print. In our next lesson we will discuss noise reduction and sharpening before printing.