Fiddling In Photoshop

These are the Shrewsbury Lasses, Morris dancers, performing in Shrewsbury.  I moved round and tried several angles, but there was always background clutter.  One photographer addressed this issue by holding his camera up on a monopod, taking overhead shots, but I doubt if this removed all the clutter and it's an odd viewpoint.  I decided to see what I could do in Photoshop.  Here's my original photograph.

The worst distractions are the yellow coat, left; the burgundy coat, centre; the lilac cardigan, right; and the To Let sign.  I disregarded the two photographers, left.  The obvious answer to the cardigan is cropping, but that was the least problem.  I tried desaturating and darkening them:

The yellow coat still stands out; a most odd, unnatural mustard.  It's clear something's been done to it.  I desaturated them completely:

The horrible coat's now off-white and passable, I suppose.  I burned it darker:

And it looks peculiar again.  I decided on a different approach: Spielberg's girl in the red coat.

And, with the accordion player:

And, cropped to A4, removing the cardigan and litter bin:

However, I think the bin needs to be there, to anchor that corner:

...And balance the one by the accordionist.  The photographers are a little obtrusive, but they fill the gap between dancers and musician.

 

I then looked at cropping just the dancers.  Working with an earlier version:

But the To Let sign is obtrusive.  I removed it:

And the space top right is now too big; it draws attention away from the dancers, allowing the viewer's attention to leak out.  I hadn't realised the sign had a useful function.  Here it is, darkened and with reduced contrast, on the version with a monochrome background:

I suppose I could darken the sky...

I think that's it.

There are still faults, stemming from the original photograph.  Primarily the shop lettering and the clutter.  It would have been nice to preserve the dancers' shadows in the crop.  I guess the main lesson re-learned is that a little time behind the camera can save an awful lot in front of the computer.