Editing must be done with restraint. If you have a photo that needs a lot of work it might be better to go back and fix the original subject before taking the shot again. However, sometimes you have to do the best you can with what you have. Here's an example from fauna, not flora, but this golden-bellied mangabey looks much better without the bars of the cage. Most of the work was done with the "Clone Tool" and the "Healing Brush". Repairs like this would be impermissible if I had been making scientific observations.
| Before | |
After | |
Here's another before and after example showing the remontant iris, Peach Jam. You can see that I’ve cropped it and I’ve used the clone tool to remove some distracting leaves under the fall on the right. Finally, I’ve used the “Shadow/Highlight” adjustment to restore some details in the right standard, which were a bit blown out in the original, while preserving the correct exposure of the darker parts of the subject.
| Unedited |  |
Edited |  |
A slug got to this beautiful South African bulb, Romulea tortuosa, before I could photograph it. Rather than waiting a year for it to bloom again, I took the shot on the left. On the right you see how it looks after cropping and some work with the clone tool and the healing brush to restore the parts of the tepals that took the damage.
| Unedited |  |
Edited |  |
Here's a technique, called focus bracketing, that you can use when you can't get enough depth of field for acceptable focus on all of the parts of a flower. The idea is to take two, or even more, exposures focussing on parts at slightly different distances from the lens. You'll need a tripod and everything about the two exposures, except for the focus plane, should be identical. You then paste one of the images over the other in two different layers. By increasing the transparency of the top layer, you'll be able to see both and can move the top one as needed to superimpose the two perfectly. It's not as easy as it sounds because the slightly different projections of the two exposures will mean that the larger image (closer focus) will need to be scaled down slightly. Once you have the two layers satisfactorily matched for position and scale you can erase the less well focussed portions of the top layer, allowing the better focussed parts of the background layer to show through. Finally you merge the layers to produce a single image. If you prefer, you can purchase a program like Helicon Focus that will do most of the work for you.
| Exposure 1 |  |
Exposure 2 |  |
In Exposure 1 above of Tricyrtis 'Empress' the closest tepal is well focussed. Exposure 2 shows better focus of the tepals in the middle distance and of the column. I've put Exposure 2 in a layer over Exposure 1 and then erased the nearest tepal. The final result is below.
| Combined exposures | |