www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Yesterday I got my first ever Nickerl's fritillaries, but the weather was so hot (31°C in the shade) that none would rest with the uppersides of their wings showing. I did get some ups pics by deliberately casting my shadow over the butterflies, inducing them to open up, but my compact is not so good in the shade and they weren't great.



I had also netted one to confirm the identity, and kept him in the shade long enough for him to want to warm up. HOWEVER, he was so happy sitting on his box in the sun he refused to walk off onto a flower, and when I eventually nudged him he flew away.

The pictures in the photoshop competition were so impressive I presumed some of you must have software that can cut out around a butterfly without having to trace the line meticulously with the mouse. I wondered if any of you would be able to take my fritillary off his box and put him on a flower. I don't want anyone to spend hours, obviously - I just though it might be a few minutes work if someone has the software. I don't like having pictures of obviously netted butterflies on my site - it gives the wrong impression to children.

I think I've got the pictures in scale:


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(crude version cut out with laptop mouse, to show what I mean)

The two originals, uncompressed, are here:

http://www.guypadfield.com/images2009/a ... hop094.jpg
http://www.guypadfield.com/images2009/a ... hop095.jpg

If anyone wants to give it a go, I'd be very grateful!!

Guy

I might give it a go later on for you Guy, no guarantees of success mind. All of the butterflies on my photoshop comp entry were done by hand - the tool (at least on my version) on PS is no good at all for it.

AH

You must be a master draughtsman, then!! I'm even more impressed now. Please don't waste your own time on this if it has to be done manually.

Guy

I tried, it's not perfect, if you like it send me a pm me with an email address and i'll email you a high res version.

Cheers

It's brilliant! I hope it didn't take too long...

I'll say 'thanks to Jerry for help editing this picture', or something like that, when I update the page. My site is about illustrating European butterflies, rather than showing off my photography skills (!) so I'm not cheating by using an enhanced image!!

The e-mail address on this site should work (the envelope next to the PM symbol) unless the new image is much bigger than the old (I can only receive e-mails up to about 5MB). If the image is huge, please use guypadfield with a gmail.com extension (can't spell it out or I'll get done by roving spam engines).

Again, many thanks.

And if anyone else has been working on it, I'd be very happy to see the results too - very impressed.

Guy

I reduce nearly all my picture to about 500 pixels across on my site. Even without the high res copy your picture crops very well to this size:



Nice work, and thanks again!

Guy

PS - Go to http://www.guypadfield.com/ and scroll down to Mellicta aurelia to see the context.