Editing Less-Than-Perfect Photos

In the picture of Honey Perfume rose beside a matching Japanese maple, below, I didn't take care to cut out dead flowers and dry-tipped leaves before taking the photo. Big mistake! As you can see, the photo is marred by these distracting elements. Still, I like the picture, and I don't have another one with this composition that I like as well.

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In the second picture, below, I used the Photoshop clone stamp to repair some of the damage, including the worst offenders in the foliage department, by replacing the burned leaf tips with green color and minimizing distracting marks. This one was also cropped a little on the right.

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Going the next step and getting rid of the fading rose blossoms would be a lot more difficult and time-consuming, though not necessarily resulting in a better-looking photo. I also brightened the photo, which brought some of the otherwise darkened background elements into clearer view, which wasn't necessarily what I wanted to happen. 

Returning back to the original size and darker background, I worked on a few more bad patches, resulting in  the photo below.

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The picture that remains is far from perfect, and it would have served me better to have snipped off the offending flowers and foliage and removed the distracting background elements. It would have taken a lot less time than it did to make repairs in Photoshop!

For a tutorial on how to repair photos in Photoshop using the Clone Stamp, go to http://www.digital-photography-tips.net/repair-photos.html