Hi Kerry, one of the most
important things you need to ask yourself before setting up a camera to make a
photo is simply, “What is it that I like the most about the subject I am
looking at?”
Looking at this photo, I am going to suggest that you were
enchanted by the rim of the mushroom, simply because it is the only part of the
picture that you have made sharp; this leads me to wonder, why did you not make
this photograph horizontal so that you could follow the rim some more? Instead
you have opted to make the picture a vertical and in the process, the top
quarter of the photo is an out of focus nothingness and so is the lower
quarter. Making the picture horizontal would have turned the rim into a journey
across the page, while less depth would have enabled us to concentrate more on
the gills.
Ok, how can you fix up this
image? First off, I would crop about 10 percent from both the top and the
bottom of the image. This will remove just enough of the boring bits to get
things interesting again.
The next step is to try and add some life to the
underside of the mushroom. The simple way to do this is to use the Lasso Tool,
set the Feather option in the menu bar to 250 pixels and then select most of
the gills. With the selection in place, now create a Curves adjustment layer
and begin to move the black cursor inwards 10 percent to darken the shadows
slightly then pull the highlights cursor inwards about 25 percent. The overall
effect here will be to increase the contrast in this local area and remove some
of that dull grey that we can see for the moment.
The fun part about using
Adjustment Layers in Photoshop is that you can also use the Brush Tool to fine-tune
the mask, and so change the way the way the adjustment affects different parts of the image. Black paints out the effect, while white is used to paint the effect
in. One useful trick is also to use the “X” key to quickly swap between white
and black as you are working. Remember that you can save your image as a PSD
(Photoshop Document) and this will keep the adjustment layers in place for you
so you can go back another time and start from where you left off. Of course you can always always use the File > Save As command to create an additional, smaller, JPEG file.
Hope this is a help… Image Doctor.
Mushroom - Image Doctor's edited version
