affinity photo BB+BB= Beautiful Bird +Background Bokeh

[Aeros4]

This is an experiment to see if the background bokeh adds to the image appeal. Used inpaint and selection brush to remove background. Duplicated image and added heavy Gausian blur to replace background.

[pxls2prnt]

I don't mind the background at all, nicely done. The mid-ground (is that a thing?) branch certainly looks off to me though. It's fuzzy, but the edges are sharp.

 

Perhaps create a new layer, remove everything but the branch, and then add a gaussian blur to that layer. That should hopefully clean things up nicely.

[Aeros4]

Hi, and good day;

                           I had some discussion about the branch issue with a friend who posts here. He pointed out the same thing. I said I would let it go and see how many comments I would get about the branch. The dynamics are as follows:- The top branch turns towards the lens and so the foreground is in focus. As it recedes to the background it looses focus as it joins the bottom branch in the background. This presented some hard challenges in masking that I had to address with manual touch up. There are plenty of repeat cloning artifacts that I will go back and clean up before it goes to print.

 

Thanks for your constructive critique. :)

[Aeros4]

This is the last edit, thanks for your input pxls2prnt. :D

[Kodiak]

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VERY COOL EDIT AEROS4! :)

[Aeros4]

I give thanks to the birding gods for such an amazing opportunity in getting this shot. Thanks for your encouragement Kodiak and thanks also to pxls2prnt. I also want to thank my producer, director and the folks who manufactured my camera and lens's without whom this would not have been possible.  ;)  :lol:  :D  ^_^  :rolleyes: 

[Kodiak]

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… and your mother?  :D