Too much land....leaves the 'beach' shore-front/whatever problematic.....doesn't read in perspective.

Pull it back left of the tree....leave a little water still beyond those trees...just not all of it.

You didn't need to remove ALL the planting....just those last recent flowers..... THEY were the 'too much'.

Part of the issue with 'realism' or credibility with fabricated landscapes is....would that new land mass so magically/closely follow that branch?

Probably not.... so don't do it.

The bird looks better to me. 

I'm really enjoying this thread. So many things to learn although I won't be doing walls anytime soon. Have all to do with getting my smx out. If there are no takers for PS9 I could use it. PS7 is good but the trial version of PS9 spoiled me. I'd really appreciate it cause I'm like you guys, use whatever is available. Especially the freebies ... I like freebies. Seriously, if you're not going to use it and are serious about putting it up Frankief I'd gladly swap one of mine for it. Here's what I got. Gimp 2.6. Blender 2.49 (2.5 is still in beta), TrueSpace (3d program although it has been discontinued from what I heard, still a good app though. Bryce 7.0 PLE (personal learning edition). Will that do?

Ha, I had it further back and something just didn't look quite right to me. I redid the ground cover because You said it looked cloned and I did not want to leave anything that looked less than perfect.

Uvah that is Paintshop Pro version 9, not Photoshop.

I see that now. Don't mind me my head is somewhere else today. Do you still want to put it up? I'll throw in a lollipop. lol

Perhaps you and I are on the wrong page as to cloning. In reply 186 there is no cloning. What I did was add a layer above my painted grass of a picture taken in my backyard of wild carrot flowers. I added a layer mask hiding all and used a soft brush to paint just the ground area back in over my grass. The similarity was completely natural as it appeared in the original photo. I consider cloning when I take the clone stamp tool and clone different areas of the image. This was not the case. So, I have added parts of that mask back into the image at this point. I can go back to version 186 and add the land mass and other changes. The land area seems to create a problem with the outer tree area making the smaller tree seem too blobby to me.

All I can say is WOW!!!   I am so glad people are using this thread and sharing their knowledge!!!  Frankie, I love how your wallpaper is, a great improvement from the original!!!     As soon as I catch up on things, I will work on my Halloween wall and post it here!!! 

Teddy, so happy to see you here! I was beginning to feel like a hijacker!  Thanks for your approval. For me it is all about learning and improving and you would be amazed what I have learned in the last  couple of weeks.

My pc was in the shop!!!   Oh you're not a hijacker Frankie!! It is interesting to watch the progress of an image, and I am glad you stuck with it!!!  Reading this thread, I have learned alot also ( one is never too old to learn) !! 

Frankief....the 'failing' is still with the land mass behind the trees on the left...lose the shore-line to its right.

All that was needed was land visible 'above' the fairly straight 'cutout' appearance of the front grass.  There is no need to try to join this land mass to the horizon/mountains....not with such a clunky 'beach'.

Painting 101 ....

Familiarity breeds contempt...or in other words...staring at a work in progress too long will blind you to its [glaring] faults.

To overcome that a painter will turn the work upside-down...or view it in a mirror.

Sounds weird but it works.

Now that is worth celebrating dude. I have a niece who was accepted to the Culinary Institute of New York. If art were food? Yum!!!