The patience of Photoshop

I have chosen my images, and then I do some serious cropping. I am starting to get an eye for what looks good but soon learn that a severe crop has its consequences. When I crop to A4, which is the crop size I am using for the edits, the image is filled in to fir the A4 size, voila noise. And some of the images had a serious problem with noise. I didn't expect this as I had made my images with a low ISO of 100.

The next thing I discover is that if I mistakenly set the A4 size with an extra 0 then the file size becomes so large that the PC dies. Trap for first time users. But I get it fixed and I start to understand how cloning and healing work. Again I get an eye and see how PATIENCE goes a long way when cleaning up an image.

I really get how getting the shot right in the first place is a far better proposition than spending hours tidying it up later in Photoshop. I learn about layers and masks, and get confused. But in all this there is the artist in me that said "i can do magic with this", and over time I will.

Here is the image that took me hours to just get the line you see in the background out. A before and after

That little bloody line, and the stress of a deadline did not leave me in a nice relaxed creative state.