Zoos and safari parks are a great place for picture opportunities especially if you have a digital camera. Once the camera is bought and assuming you have adequate storage you can shoot away to your hearts content.

The one trouble with these places is that we don't have a lot of control of the surroundings, which means we need to do a little bit of work in our software to make up for that.

They are simple and small changes, but together they can lift your pictures and give them an edge. These sorts of changes have always been done by photographers who print their own photographs in a darkroom, so what is good enough for them is good enough for us.

While we are not trying to pass our pictures off as natural history shots taken in the wild we can try and erase what traces we can that they were shot in captivity.

You can cover up pathways and concrete in your pictures by using the clone tool and/or the copy and paste facility. For small areas the clone tool can be very efficient.

The clone tool is found in the menu to the left of your Photoshop screen. Once selected you can sample an area of your image and paint that into another area. It only takes a few minutes to get the hang of it and the beauty of the clone tool is that you recreate texture as well as colour.

From time to time you will need to clone close to other areas of your picture that you want to retain. To do this effectively make a selection along the edges you want to protect and in our picture of the bear this was the edges of the tree trunk. Make sure you feather the edge of your selection by 1 - 2 pixel as this will make your new cloned edge much more acceptable to the eye.

Using these simple techniques you will be able to completely eliminate all the concrete and leave no signs of your work.

Tip.........When using the clone tool use it in small touches rather than in a brush stroke. If you use the brush stoke method you can introduce tell tail signs of the cloning where you clone a cloned area and a pattern effect appears. Vary your clone selection point and cover the areas in a series of dabs and the end result will be undetectable.

To make your main subject stand out a little better from the background try adding a little blur to the top part of the background. You can do this by making a freehand selection around your subject using the lasso tool. Don't forget the feather the edge of that selection and try around 25-50 for your feather radius. As you add gaussian blur from the filter menu you will see that the feathered edge of your selection makes the blur natural and believable.

You may also wish to tone down high lights in the background that distract from the main subject. Try creating a new blank layer and selecting a green colour from the grass with the eye dropper tool. Choose the airbrush and with the pressure setting really low at around 2-5 add a little green to the high lights and gradually dull them down.

If you compare your starting image with your final image you will see just how small changes can improve the picture. You can stay with your coloured image, but with this type of subject consider a sepia tone that can be added from the hue and saturation palette. Just tick the colorize box and adjust the hue and saturation to get the tone you want. Try these simple techniques and transform your pictures.