Learning Photoshop

The truth is that I usually do not use Photoshop except for some cropping, straightening, and maybe adjusting the contrast and brightness.  Main reason for not using Photoshop is so I can learn to shoot in such a way that I end up with a photo as close to what I am aiming for.  And the other reason is that I don’t know how to use it – except for the basics.

But I must admit that there are those times – when no matter what I do, I cannot avoid certain objects in my photos that I just wish were not there.  This week I shot a photo of a hawk in my yard.  No matter how many shots…they all had branches in the way.

So I thought – this would be a good time to see if I can learn how to remove them from the photo by using Photoshop.  Since I don’t have any experience with it (nor the time to learn it) I just played around with some of the different features.  The result is below.

I don’t like the result but I also know that I didn’t do things properly and thus the reason for all the imperfections.  However, I can see now that there are times that knowledge of Photoshop may be useful to me.  Maybe ONE DAY I may take the time to learn how to use the powerful program .  For now, I am still working on learning all the features on my new camera.