Digital Sports Photography - Image Distractions

Unless there is a fundamental problem with your image, most minor distractions can be removed, or at least be minimized, using digital techniques.

Problem
While concentrating on your subject it is easy not to notice distracting objects in the picture area. This could be something minor, such as a discarded food wrapper, but out-of-focus highlights can also be a problem.

Analysis
The small viewfinders of many cameras make it difficult to see much subject detail. Furthermore, though some¬thing is distant and looks out of focus, it may still be within the depth of field of your lens. At other times, you simply cannot avoid including, say, telephone wires in the background of a scene.

Solution
You may not need to remove a distraction completely -simply reducing the difference between it and adjacent areas may be enough. The usual way to achieve this is with cloning - duplicating part of an image and placing it into another part. For example, blue sky can be easily cloned onto wires crossing it, as long as you are careful to use areas that match in brightness and hue. If you clone from as close to the distraction as possible, this should not be too much of a problem.

You could also try desaturating the background: select the main subject and invert the selection; or select the background and lower saturation using the Color Satur¬ation control. You could also paint over the background using the Saturation or Sponge tool set to desaturate.

Another method is to blur the background. Select the main subject and invert the selection, or select the back¬ground directly, and apply a Blur filter. Select a narrow feather edge to retain sharpness in the subject's outline. Choose carefully or, when Blur is applied, the selected region will be left with a distinct margin. Try different settings, keeping in mind the image's output size - small images need more blur than large ones.

How to avoid the problem
Check the viewfinder image carefully before shoot¬ing. This is easier with an SLR camera, which is why most professionals use them. Long focal length lenses (or zoom settings) reduce depth of field and tend to blur backgrounds. And, if appropriate to the subject use a lower viewpoint and look upward to increase the amount of non-distracting sky.