I really like this gift, but of the three quick shots I took of it, only one wasn't badly over-exposed—this one:

giftwarp—wire edged fabric ribbon, curling ribbon, silk flowers, brown paper crinkles; photographed 14oct23 pixel pro 6, f1.9, ev 0, 1/90s, ISO 139; lots and lots and lots of cloning, smudging, and even straight out painting of the background.

Usually the pixel does a pretty good job, but for whatever reason, it really, badly blew out the highlites on the pink and white curling ribbons, and I didn't realize that until I started prepping the page, which meant the only version on a nice background was unusable. This would've been fine, except it was kind of a long gift, and the shiny piece of aluminum I used as a background on my first try wasn't really big enough, at least with the angle I used. So I had to do a lot of futzing to take out all the distracting stuff around the edges. If you think you're seeing all kinds of fake-photo type artifacts...it's because you're seeing all kinds of digital processing, especially around the perimeter.

Someday I really am going to have learn proper image editing, aka learning to separate the subject from the background. In the meantime, why yes it's far easier just to get it right in camera to begin with. On the other hand, I liked the decorations so much that I felt it was worth rescuing this piece.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.