Hiding Out in the Wetlands

Took this image of a Limpkin bird a while back when photographing at the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands in Brevard, Florida (also known as the Viera Wetlands) with my photo club. This was not actually how the bird appeared – he was trying to hide from all the tourists taking his picture by standing in a batch of grass and reeds. That was the challenge. I had heard that CC2015 had updated their Spot Healing Brush and it worked nicely on this image. I tried it in CS6 first and got marginal results. I have heard that a lot of people are having trouble with the update Healing Brush and Adobe is looking into it. So do watch the results if you are using it. Like I said, I had no problems in this image. Otherwise on a New Layer just added in some of my favorite and free Frostbo Set 2 Grass brushes 009 and 005 strokes to fill in some grass – need to lock the layer and paint over with Color Dodge and Multiply to get the natural feel. Set layer opacity to Color Dodge, duplicated layer, and adjusted opacities of both layers. Jai Johnson’s beautiful Clouds Over the Pasture texture was used and Nik Viveza 2 to add sharpness to the birds eye and beak. That was it. Love playing in Photoshop!…..Digital Lady Syd