Liverpool city centre is being re-built. Much demolition. Biggest building site in the world. Exciting times. This building is being refurbished.

When I saw it it was the three upstairs windows that took my attention. In Liverpool we have three waterside buildings which are refered to as the Three Graces. It was my intention to photoshop three shots of the same woman into the windows and sail the image as The Three Graces. I may yet do so.

However, I have always liked bricks and once I had got this far I decided to stop.

My question is; does this work as an image? I like it but do you?

Also, I tried to erase the wire above the windows using the healing brush and made a right mess of it. How would you have approached the challenge?

Indigo

Hi Indigo!

I would kill to be there with my camera. It's extraordinary the color of the brick offset by the green moss and the blue below. Personally, I think your adjustment is too dark. If you look at your levels, there is very little quarter tone and half tone. I would enhance with a S curves adjustment and perhaps a bit of saturation. MHO. Also, I would crop out the top of the image. For the wire try this. Set your clone brush to 2 pixel 100% opacity. Alt-click right below the wire. Set your clone stamp on the wire immediately above and click once. Move down to an obvious end section of the wire and Shift - click on the wire. That gives you a completly straight clone line.
Hope that helps and would love to see other building shots. On Vancouver Island, we're almost completly devoid of brick of any kind so your's is a treat to see.

Dave

Hi Indigo,

Dave's right, the clone tool is the one to use in this case. The Healing brush is fine where there is'nt a strong texture. However, the brickwork, is a strong texture, and the Healing Brush tends to blur and would therefore be visible.

The amount of the blur in Healing Brush is influenced by the hardness of the brush used, and this is worth remembering, but clone tool is best here.

Open a new layer, and set clone brush fairly hard, then follow Dave's instructions to make job fairly simple.

Good luck.

Duv/Gary,

Read your posts with interest.

Duv - take your point about the histogram. I admit that I was attempting to make the bricks glow as if lit from within and did not take note of how I was restricting the dynamic range.

Gary - Thanks for adding to the use of the cloning tool info.

Out of town for just over a week but on return I will revisit the original and reproduce using your suggestions, post and see how we go.

Many thanks for your input.

Indigo

Hello Folks,

I know I said that I would be 'out of town for a few days' but .........

Computer died on me. Got it back up. Hard drive died. Lost too much to talk about. Back up anything and every thing that is important to you on a daily basis; because if you don't you will end up like me.

Apart from the images I have lost the biggest inconvenience was the loss of the email addresses. I did not have a hard copy of a single address. Not good.

Will be visiting the forum and posting again. Second hand computer and away we go. Good to be back.

Indigo

it may be possible to recover the data on your harddrive. check the 'hardware' forum. i believe there's a thread there on this subject.

Craig

Hi Indigo,

Glad to see you back, sorry to hear of your computer problems.

The lesson on regular backups can be a hard one to learn (I speak as one who also learned the hard way).

it may be possible to recover the data on your harddrive. check the 'hardware' forum. i believe there's a thread there on this subject.

Craig
Thanks for that Craig. Situation is that a 'friend' helped me out with the upgrade to my new computer with larger hard drive. He copied the data from my old hard drive to the new one. However, don't ask how or why, he did not copy the entire drive just 'the important bits'. His ex wife needed a hard drive so he repaired mine, reformatted it and installed it in her machine.

Ahh well.

By the time I returned from hols the deal was done. Still friends.

Always ensure that you give complete and accurate instructions for any job, large or small, because if it can be cocked up it will be.

Probably could have rescued some of the data but it would have made my friend look a right Charlie with his ex. Somethings you do not do.

Indigo

Probably could have rescued some of the data but it would have made my friend look a right Charlie with his ex. Somethings you do not do. ah, ok ;)

Craig