WINTER WILDLIFE WORKSHOP

January 5 -10, 2024

What’s wrong with this picture?

Snow leopards are at the top of my list of wildlife I find utterly compelling. I photographed this leopard during my annual Winter Wildlife Workshop in Montana. At 20 frames per second, I capture lots of great images, but these cats move very quickly. As the camera-subject distance shrinks and they fill a large part of the frame, it can be very difficult to prevent parts of their bodies from getting cropped. I didn’t have time to zoom back, so in this shot a forepaw and the tip of the tail were cut off. Not acceptable.

Until recently, this would have been a challenge to fix. With Photoshop’s new Beta version, I was able to repair the problem in less than a minute. Here’s how I did it.

I opened the image in Photoshop Beta and then, using the pulldown menu command Image > canvas size, I expanded the picture area downward. I then selected this expanded area with the rectangular marquee tool and included a little of the image itself -- the snow, rocks, and a small amount of the extended forepaw. When a selection is made in the Beta version, a small bar appears giving a new option in Photoshop: I then clicked ‘generative fill’, and then I hit ‘generate’.

Within a few seconds, the entire bottom extended portion of the image filled in with snow and rocks, and the completion of the cat’s foot took place. I then repeated that for the top of the image which created the tip of the tail.

With this kind of technology now at our finger tips, we can revisit old images that were cropped too tightly and make those images perfect. What a great time to be a photographer!