Thanks, philippe. I made a mess, and this wasn't the only one.

Ah, I might have known :P

Hey, dennis. Me, too. It is just a blob of water splashing around. I decided not to retouch it.

I figured it was part of the splash King, and I can't imagine it would have been easy to fix in any case.

This was some stuff I borrowed from my ex-wife, when she worked for a medical school. They told me I could break as many as I wanted to.

Thanks for the kind words, folks.

@dennis...I would simply have cloned from the test tube on the right, then modified it a bit so it wasn't obvious. I'm good at that sort of thing. I'm trying to go for the au natural look more often.

Hehe, I guess I'm lobbying for that theme in the best of all places :DDD

And now I know the story - do I understand you got all this stuff just to break them for this photo? Wow!

Thanks for your comments and ratings sufficient to get this featured.

I wonder if the quality ratings (3.27) would have been higher if I had cloned out all the out-of-focus droplets of liquid that were scattered when the tube broke.

What do you think? Should I have cloned ou the two broken pieces of test tube in the bottom left and to the right of center? I may do it before I post this image on my web site and I'd appreciate your opinion.

Great shot and worthy of a feature.

congrats on the feature, King!
Leave the picture as it is! That's what I'd say,,,

the background is what confused me. The foreground is so sharp and detailed, and the background doesn't seem to match? Maybe something darker? Are those water drops back there? good one to get featured, that's for sure. It does say broken!

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Here is my Photoshop task list:
1) Eliminate the blob that covers the left-hand test tube in the rack. Do this by extracting a section of the the right-hand test tube and overlaying it on the left, then do some cleanup and adjust it so it isn't obvious.
2) Clean up the background. The out-of-focus splashes are confusing. Remove the background blobs that are seen through the breaking test tube.

After I do this, I'll post the cleaned version on my website for comparison.

mooch...what can I say? Thank you!

Ana...thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate it.

ChriZ, BioLarzen, Dave_Mac, Tracy, philippe, dennis, martylavender, CaptureThis, Wint3r...thanks and thanks again.

Folks,

Here's another version of this shot, showing more at the top and with the cleanup talked about above--could be done better, just stopped here:

http://kingdouglas.com/weeklyshot/test-tubes.jpg

So which version is better, in your opinion?

King great work (in both cases)!

Normally I'm mostly a purist and tend not to edit out such nuances... I'd prefer to leave an image as much 'as shot' as possible.

In this case however, after seeing your Photoshop work, it's hard to stick my that opinion! I will say that if I hadn't seen the updated version, I'd have no quibbles with the original.

King, Looks very good! But please get rid of that bubble being at the same spot...
The background is better like that imo
What if you go the other way and put in more water blobs, or make them more obvious?

Chriz...which bubble? :>)

I haven't decided which image I will post on my site, but if I go with the cleaned-up one, I will do some more work on the photo. This is just a test.

Thanks for your comments!

@Jason...thanks for your comments. I tend to agree with you.

King, this bubble: http://mandarin.blueorbs.com/share/bubbleb2d38.png
but since it was just a test and you might be working on it more, You for sure would have gotten this!

I like the touched up shot a lot better! It really POPS out now!

Ana, thanks for looking and comparing.

ChriZ...thanks, dude, for the mini-photo. I was making a joke about which bubble, but now I know *exactly* which one you were referring to.

I too like the second one better - but I would be tempted to clone out the piece of glass at the bottom as well...

CraigMartin,

I agree with you. If I'm going as far as I've already gone...

Thanks for your opinion.

King,

I gave it a 5 for quality anyway. And I like the original version more. Seems more natural.

And congrats for getting it featured!

Thanks, bio...what a trooper! A five! Might be my first one.

No, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm used to average ratings in the low threes (which doesn't make me special, I know), to to actually know that I got a five on something is a treat.

Plus, I just got straight 1's from somebody on my second submission, so 5 is like a message from God...do I exaggerate a bit? :>)

All in fun.

Low 3's!???! That's high for weekly shots!! :)

Very, very, very loooooooooow 3's.

Lowest overall average: 1.79

Number of images with overall average less than 3: 13

:>)

You're lowest over all is a 1.7?? I can beat that! hee hee

damn
1.8