Fat fingered n00b!

[GaryB]

I recently bought a new camera and while using it kept getting part of my finger in the way. :oops:

Example:

I have not done any major editing before but would like some guidance on how to fix my photos short of cropping them and loosing part of the pic.

Thanks,

Gary

[007 Nab]

Ooh... with that much in the way... I dunno if this pic can be saved without some cropping...

I would suggest darkening the area to make it look like background shadows in this particular picture (Instead of using the clone stamp tool to copy the background where it would be).

I'm gonna give it a try, if you don't mind, and see what I can come up with.

Stay tuned

EDIT: Alright, I tried some stuff, came out with pretty unsucessful results. Best new advice i can think of is to give the picture 4 black blurred corners - make it look like a portrait. If you don't want to do that, I think your second best bet will be just to crop stuff out.

[Ash]

If you have another photo with the same spot but not covered, paste that part onto this photo.

If not, with that much area covered, it's hard to fix.

Use a tripod, or hold the camera correctlly.

Taking good photos beats any fixing jobs.

[Simon Brown]

My Attempt:

[007 Nab]

That's what I came up with as well, Simon. If you were to duplicate and flip that to make corners, it could actually look it was on purpose

[Myrddin]

From the onset I'm must apologise as I'm exhausted and tired so there won't be usual, long description accompanying this, and the end product may need some tweaking at your end or by others. (In fact, looking at it now, it looks truly awful; I highly recommend you edit this further yourself.)

Right, the sequence is as follows: before, after, link to the PDN file...

http://www.mediafire.com/?ddi19yco2n0

(Cripes, have you seen the transition between the two hair styles?! What was I thinking?)

The process:

- I used sections from the cabinet face to replace the non-existent one (removing some features so to appear individual);

- a combination of segments from the hair and face to reconstruct what is missing;

- add to that parts of other people's hair, edited accordingly (Image 1, Image 2 (I don't know who these people are, nor care));

- transparent gradients, blend modes and layer opacity to finish off, plus the usual photo editing stuff such as Levels, Curves, so on and so

forth.

Have fun. All the layers are named so you can play to your heart's content without confusion. It should be noted that the the choosing of Images 1 and 2 had no bearing on what character I thought the orange-topped lady is, purely selected for hair style.

[Max Power]

Amazing Myrddin... absolutely stunning, never thought that I would say that to anybody else except my mirror image perhaps. Just Wow!

I can see only one fault at the ear... but hey if I didn't knew the real image I wouldn't recognize it.

[Myrddin]

The faults keep piling up...

I'm glad I did include the PDN therefore anyone can download and modify as they see fit. You could say I was a starting point for people wanting to try this out - a stepping stone, even.

[007 Nab]

While, to be honest, there are various faults with the hair/face, I must say you did an amazing job with the background!

Very well done!

[Saabo]

Thats amazing i did not know you could do that type of thing ..

And maybe i havent got a trianed eye buti cant really see anything wrong with that .

Good Job!