Best way to remove out of focus distraction

Did a portrait shoot today and one of the better shots was a really early one, when I was setting up lighting/exposure and not paying enough attention to background - everything is good, except in the bokeh I have a shiny lamppost running down through my subject

It is well out of focus but really distracting. Clone and Heal are both leaving a mess when I try to clean things up, as the oof seems very unforgiving

Am I missing something? I thought cleaning an oof background would be easier than a crisp one

Can you post the image so we can see?

Regards
David

if its running down the middle can u not create a new file then copy the 2 side oarts and oaste them together on the new file?

dont want to get client permission to share photo, but here is extract. The proximity of hair etc adds to the complexity a little but my usual fixes dont seem to work well on bokeh like this

A very quick mess with the spot removal and clone stamp tools, no perfect I know but I'm watching motogp qualifying! I think with a little more time it would tidy up perfectly.

Here's mine, not too sure why you're finding this difficult to clone out as it seems quite straightforward?

Just used the clone tool in Photoshop, nothing else.




Regards
David

Put mine to shame! In my defence I have one and half eyes on my TV!!

nicely done David

my skills with photoshop arent a patch on this (I was taught to capture a decent picture in the first place, so only have myself to blame on this one), can you share any info of your clone settings

Having rarely cloned anything I tend to use 'Normal', 100% opacity, soft edge brush in quite a big size (60 pixel here)

The image was taken in front of glass and there are subtle reflections that also make the cloning I have tried really obvious

I start off at 100% opacity with a brush size appropriate to the area to be cloned. On this one it would have been around 100 to 120 I think.

Once the rough cloning is complete I usually reduce the opacity to 45% or thereabouts, reduce the brush size and re-do the edges, i.e. where the clone meets the non-cloned area, just to make sure that the edges are invisible.

Regards
David

Brilliant advice! I hadn't thought of going over it a second time to clean the edges.