Getting Tough, Getting Smart

You know that little flaw in the image that you want to overlook because otherwise it's a great photograph, hate to tell ya, but it's only going to get bigger, stick out more and bug you much more.

The odds of an image weakness you can see now somehow fading from your consciousness is near zip.

Either fix it or throw it - some image flaws can be reduced to the point they do really fade, but if that's not possible, better to chuck the image now and move on - the time you spend working around the flaw could be far better spent.

That said, here's some things I have done successfully in the past.

- the darkness of one corner is completely out of balance with the rest of the image. A good job with curves and a mask might be enough to make the corner match. Just because you know it was a darker material than what was in the other corners doesn't mean it has to appear that way in the photograph.

- the lovely lines and curves of an image are spoiled by, say a branch. I think it's entirely reasonable to take out dead branches with some Photoshop cloning, unless you don't think you are creating art, in which case leave the branch or the pop can and hope people buy your 'authentic' argument.

- things don't quite line up in the corner - consider using a free transform and slightly stretching the image - watch for odd distortions if you do it too much.

- something really distracting in an image - could it be the colour - would a black and white conversion with appropriate filtering make it fade from view? I'm not above some subtle colour changes with a mask in a colour image to save an otherwise nice image.

- skilled work on local brightness and contrast (by whatever method) can not only save an image - it can literally make an image. You thought Ansel's contact proofs looked even remotely like his final prints - I'd bet you'd be hard pressed to even recognize the images when you flip through the proofs - he made This from That? Yup!