Adding extra vegetation in photoshop

Hej!

This morning I have been busy with adding more vegetation to an image to be exact I have added bushes. If you remember a recent blog I said it was cheating adding fore and backgrounds if they were not there from the start. I still believe that is true when it comes to getting the real image of what a place looks like. But to my own defense here the picture where I have added the bushes to is one year old and if I would take that same picture today I would have the bushes there. So yes I could go and take another picture from the same vantage point today and get a similar picture but I would not get the same lighting circumstances as I had last year. It is very rare for us here to get that kind of lighting with clouds and the sun therefore I have added the today larger bushes from another picture that I took the other day  to the old picture.  If you look closely at the old picture the before picture you will see that the bushes were planted last year but not big like they are now.

When you do something like this you of course need to be careful to make sure that the bushes have the right size for the scale of picture that you have and that the lighting is similar or that you can create a similar lighting. The picture where I have copied and pasted the bushes from I had taken from a totally different vantage point and they were therefore too large in comparison to the other vegetation in the photograph to make it all look real so I had to make them a lot smaller. The resolution on these pictures below are quite small so it might be hard to see the difference. In the second photograph I have circled where the bushes are so that you know where to look at least.

All these changes are quite easily done in photoshop if you know how of course but that is how it is with everything once you have mastered it nothing is really too hard to do. Don't you agree?

The final picture

The before picture

The picture that I took the bushes from

Changing the composition of a photograph

Sometimes when you are on a photo shoot you are presented with photo opportunities that you just cant miss but if you had planned it you would have changed a few things like in the photograph below we had the scene set up for two golfers putting on the green. But before we had started to shoot that scene a camel rider came by. I took a few pictures of them walking by. Now when you look at the composition of the golf bag I was wishing that it was facing inwards the photograph and not out so that the viewers eyes are not drawn out of the picture but rather in towards the camel rider.  So since this shot was not planned the golf bag is facing the wrong direction if I would do it again I would turn the bag and also direct the camel rider into a different position in the photograph. But a quick fix of a photograph like this is to copy and mirror the part of the image you want to turn in photoshop. Which I did here, below I have posted both pictures so that you can see the before and after of what I did. I could also have changed the position of the camel rider in photoshop but to me this time it was not necessary for this picture to work. But it is definitively doable with not too much effort if you are familiar with photoshop.

Picture above is of the final image after I have changed the position of the golf bag.

This is the before picture.

Is it cheating when changing an image in PS?

It has been very busy times since I got back from my New York trip.
I am working with a travel agent that wants new images for their image gallery on their website and their brochures. Now when you get a project like that and you have a deadline its not always the weather is on your side. So is it then cheating to add interesting foreground and backgrounds to an image in PS? Well, Yes if the picture is supposed to reflect what the place has to offer it is cheating. But adding a bit of interesting sky such as a nice cloud here and there I do not consider it cheating that is to me in my book ok to do. But then you need to calculate in all the extra hours that you need to actually make it happen. That kind of editing I do in Photoshop but all my photographs starts out in Aperture and get a bit of work done on them there first.

I have also been busy working on an advert for a local hotel. But that is all done and printed and posted on location already. Sometimes Egypt surprises you with its efficiency. Or does it have to do with the people that are executing it….. hum probably.