Please help beautify my photo!!

[Coll]

Hi all, so I took some pictures of the two harbor seals that followed me my entire hour long dive but in the pictures there are some annoying spots, I really want to suprise my girlfriend with a big fat framed harbor seal head to enjoy but I need to clean the pictures up and I'm not very good with the photo editing software, can anyone help?! Thanks so much!!

 

[Scuba Ken]

I can help but I would need to see the file. PM me and I'll give you my email.

 

[NadMat]

ken, you can click on a thumbnail to open it and then save as. I tried to use the 'underwater' action I got here on SB on it, but it didn't help as much as with all my green murky pictures.

 

[diversteve]

I took a quick pass at the third one. Unfortunately I may've cut off part of his head, it was hard to differentiate between it and the background.

And I'm totally guessing on skin color and tone.

Lot's of backscatter ("annoying spots"), too much to clone out. So my solution was to replace it with a sold background.

If you did a rectangular crop starting just outside his left flipper, it might make an interesting image framed in landscape orientation. IOW lose some of the black on both the top and left.

I'm not sure that your image would print very large though, it's kind of blurry. Here's a size reduced sample.

lmk what you think of it before I do any more work on the larger one. I'll check back here in a day or two.

 

[shark_tamer]

Can't really help you on the backscatter ... but I checked the properties of your pictures !!!

If you want a good digital print of any pictures, you pic. has to be at a minimum of 100 dpi. For a top digital quality, 300 dpi.

Roughly, for a very good 11X14 digital print, your file should be around 30MB, and DO NOT compress into jpeg if you go to a good lab. Instead, use TIFF files ...

 

[Coll]

Hey Steve,

Thanks for your shot at the picture, I do think it is much better. Would you mind sending me the picture? I'll PM you my e-mail. I have Picasa 2 and can't figure out how to put in solid backgrounds or clean up backscatter, any tips? Thanks again!

 

[Larry C]

Here's the best I could do mostly using the clone tool before darkening slightly, increasing contrast a bit, auto color and magnetic lasso to isolate the eye and auto level it. This is 800X600 but if you want the full size, I can try to e-mail it.

 

[alcina]

Roughly, for a very good 11X14 digital print, your file should be around 30MB, and DO NOT compress into jpeg if you go to a good lab. Instead, use TIFF files ...

Ummm, this isn't the absolute. I never save to TIFF and my pro labs only wants jpegs. None of the files I've sent to them have been more than about 3-6MB and they've come up spot on. Converting to jpeg is the last step...all editing is done on the RAW (LR) and PSD (PSCS3)

Talk to your individual print lab as each requires something different in file size and type.

To make sure you have the best information in your photo possible, always shoot in the highest quality your camera offers. If that's RAW format even better, but if you are shooting jpegs, make sure it's the best possible in camera.

 

[Larry C]

Here's another one.

 

[ce4jesus]

My quick rendition. Pretty much just creating a layer in photoshop, painting a black background and then setting to overlay and adjusting the opacity. These are always tough and you can do some things with levels but ultimately you end up losing detail when you get rid of the backscatter and particulate.