I was taught to do all the work in capturing a good photo and not fix things in the darkroom, so when it comes to Photoshop my skills are still developing

Anyhow, got a lot of the basic controls ok from books and playing (and guidance from folks here) but I am now bumping in to my own limitations - it may be that you want to stop reading now and just point me to some good on-line tutorials (believe me I have looked and wasted plenty of time searching)

Lets suppose I have a colour portrait going to high key black and white. Already took it to b&w via channel mixer layer to background copy, added a curves layer, did some burning - all okay so far. In capture the background wasn't quite blown out and I am struggling to select it to do this as there is a graduation across the image

Worse case would be to erase it by pixels or something but I have several to do and want to learn how to do this "properly". So how to extract the background quickly and easily?

I too am learning my way round flash, even with a DSLR it is worth taking lots of notes of exact readings and settings - at least for me

for what its worth I have found the AF280T sensor incredibly predicable / reliable even with bounce - remember it takes an average reading and wants to make everything 18% grey

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

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

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

A wonderful piece of kit that simply isnt getting any use any more. Uses 35mm film for standard format images using 30mm f3.5 lens or creates panoramic images at 24mm

Mostly in great condition. Three cosmetic marks: fingernail scratch next to on/off button, small paint rub on bottom corner and small (c4mm) indentation to front cover on the side - without those it would be near mint (I think)

Will get some pictures up if there is interest

sorry kanpan - your link looks like spam to me

one thing I do in bright situations like these is use a polariser if I want shallow d-o-f

thanks for all the comments folks - learnt a bit about outdoor flash from here

ok, taking a simplistic "sunny 16" view of exposure f6.3 is too wide

I tend to agree with mongoose, if you want to stick to the camera doing the work the Tv and 1/180 is a good place to start. ISO 100 in bright sun might help

highlights look blown to me

be good to know the Aperture, Shutter, ISO but I think the camera is running out of adjustments