Clone or heal in lightroom

[ScubaDiva]

I have a pic of a trout from yesterday which has a messy looking diver beside it in the background. I've tried using the clone and heal tool in LR but all my efforts don't work and look extremely messy.

Any advice on how to do this in a neat fashion or is a diver just too big to get rid of?

[Cussy]

Difficult to say, post it and we can comment. If it is big then I'd be tempted to bring it into PS and isolate fish and background and process each as a layer separately.
Rob

[ScubaDiva]

Here it is. No PS installed at the moment though, just LR.

[Cussy]

As I think you already know, I'd say that's too big.

However, as you don't have PS what I'd suggest is to use the "wand" tool thing. Set that to an EV of -4 and you can then paint out the background and make it a lot darker (even black). Use a big circle for the majority and then close into a small one for isolating fish and background. I normally paint in red so you can exactly see what is happening and then change it to black (just have a play and you should see what I'm getting at).

Might not be the effect you're after, but can be done in 5 minutes or so.

It's what I had to do on these ones as there was something affecting the background:

The second one here was done quickly in LR and I have a much better version from PS.

HTH
Rob

[ScubaDiva]

Will have to try again tonight when I have a bit more time as (a) I appear not to have a steady painting hand and keep painting out bits of the fish and (d) I can't get the background as dark as yours - its black but I can still see through it. Also tried painting over the diver in a blue similar to the water colour but agin that was transparent.

[KenByrne]

I use PS not LR but a prefer the heal tool to the clone tool for most situations. Sometimes though the heal tool just seems to pick the wrong thing to paint with and then the clone tool is better.

[KenByrne]

Just had a quick play in PS using the dust and scratch fileter and then the history brush as described here for backscatter. Leaves a bit of a shadow.

[ScubaDiva]

Looks good to me Ken - would you be able to e-mail me a copy?

[Blu DL]

Originally Posted by ScubaDiva

Will have to try again tonight when I have a bit more time as (a) I appear not to have a steady painting hand and keep painting out bits of the fish and (d) I can't get the background as dark as yours - its black but I can still see through it. Also tried painting over the diver in a blue similar to the water colour but agin that was transparent.

depends what you are doing but the magnetic lasso can be really useful