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Picture processing in the digital darkroom
by Alain Fossé and Stéphane Moniotte

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Pictures by Alain Fossé. 

To improve this dove picture, I have cleaned the background from the aerial
grid behind the bird and sharpened the bird.

To do this, in Photoshop 5.0 LE, I have:
1. cropped the picture to get rid of superfluous background with the "Crop tool".

2. resized the picture with "Image" menu->"Image size..."->"Pixel Dimensions:Width=30%" (check "Resample Image= Bicubic" at the bottom of the box).

3. erased the aerial grid behind the dove with "Eraser tool" (see the Options window to select a tool, "Paintbrush", "Airbrush"...) and "Marquee tool".

4. cloned in the sky color with "Eyedropper tool".

5. filled in the erased parts with the selected colour with "Paint Bucket tool" (you can repeat to extend the filling, try various "tolerance" values in the "Options" window, the greater the number, the greater the filling). 

6. sharpened the bird with "Filter"->"Sharpen"->"Unsharp Mask..." where I have played with "Amount", "Radius" and "Threshold" to get the desired sharpening (I may have just sharpened the dove-not its perch-after selecting the bird and applying the sharpening on the selection).