Evaluate My Photo

[Siki]

Questions- For Saddled Butterflyfish

1. I like the colorful dance that these butterflyfish do as they feed but I find the background distracting. As you can see, I have dulled it, removed it, etc and still nothing strikes me as quite right. Do you have any suggestions?

2. All views of this photograph (print or screen) tell me that there is no detail in the curved white section of the fish. However, when I bring this photograph through camera raw and/or look at it in Levels, I am told that there is no clipping. What is going on?

3. There are some smudges on the black parts of the fish that are not on the original image. Does anyone have any idea how I allowed these smudges to get into the photograph?

4. Cropping is a real problem for me. Does anyone have suggestions for cropping?

5. What overall suggestions and impressions to you have to make this original shot &/print better?

[canuckamuck]

I added a 30% magenta overlay to the background

It reduced some of the competing greens. you'll have to compare the two to see if you like the change

Oh yeah I got rid of that shell thing creeping in from the bottom left corner.

[Siki]

I like it!

It surprises me that I didn’t even see the problem with the greens. I just knew that something wasn’t right.

There are a number of ways to boost the magenta in the background. How did you do it? I have not made much use of Blending Modes.

Thanks for your comments. I learned a lot.

Aloha

Siki

[canuckamuck]

I just isolated the fish (paths) and then filled the background with magenta. I set the blending mode to overlay and the transparency to 30 percent.

I did it by just trying stuff though, trial and error.