Is there a quick way to move a bird on a solid background?

I took a nice shot of a Blackbird and want to move it so that it isn't flying out of the frame. My background is almost totally blue. Is there a quick way to cut and paste or something that will allow me to move the bird in the photo?

Thanks!!

Kyle, the real photoshop experts probably know of a way, but when I want to do what you need done I add several inches of blank canvas in front of the bird and clone in additional background by sampling from the existing background. You add canvas, if you haven't done it before, by dragging down from the "image" category in the top toolbar in Photoshop and selecting "canvas size."

The process works well on solid backgrounds, and the more solid with color and the fewer the color transitions, the easier it is.

There's a similar way to Steve's that I've found works better than cloning sometimes, if you have at least a little rom in front of the bird. You can :

1) Increase the canvas size
2) Select the rectangular area in front of the bird
3) Do a "Free Transform" command for the selection
4) Stretch the selection to fill the canvas

This can avoid any lines you may get from cloning which would then probably have to be repaired with the healing brush.

If you posted the image, people could download the web version to illustrate the techniques that you could use.

David, I'm using CS2 on a Mac. Where's the "free transform" command found, and are you using the crop tool to select the portion of the image to transform?
Can you give a bit more of a detailed blow-by-blow? Thanks! Mmmm, new knowledge good.

(Well, I tried to post a sample image but it wouldn't let me.)

Here's a quick run-through of how I typically do it, with a sample image. It was quick-and-dirty work partly done. I added 2 inches of canvas to the right side of the image.

With the image on the screen (I use CS2), drag down from "image" and select "canvas size." Then use the arrow box to place your existing image into the new canvas. For example, if you want to add canvas to the top and left sides, select the arrow for the lower right quadrant, which places the image in the lower right and adds canvas to the top and left. Then type in the amount of canvas you want added, and your new canvas will show the image in the lower righthand quadrant with the new white canvas added.

Then select a large cloning circle with a feathered rather than a hard edge and begin sampling the original background and moving it onto the new canvas.

OK.....Just a warning. I'm going to post a series of images showing how I do this (I'm bored, and I like PS.....weird, I know ) Here's the first of 10....Let's assume I want to add more data to the left side of the image, so the bird isn't so centered.

I'm going to stretch the area that's already there, to fill a larger portion of the image. First I select the part of the image I want to stretch using the rectangular marquee tool. Selecting a larger area will mean less stretching, and probably less problems.

With the canvas still selected, I create a new layer, which will copy the selection onto the new layer automatically. (Note the two layers in the layer pallete on the right).

Now I add blank canvas, so I have somewhere to stretch the background into. This is done in Elements by selecting Image->Resize->Canvas Size. I added 2 inches to the left side in this case (on a 14 inch wide image).

Next, I select everything in the top layer (I usually use the magic wand to select everything but what I want, then invert it - but use your favorite method).

Now select Free Transform, to stretch what you have selected.

Select the left center handle on the selection box, and pull it left. This is in the middle of the stretch. You can actually go off the canvas a little to make sure you don't leave any white.

When you're done stretching, hit enter to finalize it.

Here's the final....Obviously, the more uniform the BG, the better this works.

Thanks, David. My CS2 doesn't look anything at all like your screen shots, but thanks for offering.

Oh yeah, thanks Steve - I should mention that that's Elements 4.0. Things look different in CS versions, but the capabilities are pretty much the same in this case I think.

I don't doubt the parallel capabilities at all, man.

Ok, I've got it accomplished. I'm going to post the photo in avian here in a bit.