[Ali]

Here is a picture taken today of a friends hairy lurcher lad. I love the shot - he looks so comical and so very 'him'

As the shot is straight on, his hairy haunches seem to merge in with and detract from the main focus, ie. his hairy head! Is it worth trying to play about to 'lift' part of the image, or does it work as it is? Or does it not work at all?

All suggestions, comments and 'pimps' welcome.
I'd appreciate explanations of any pimps as they really do help me learn. Thank you!

[P-E]

It's a fine shot Ali.

As an alternative I just brushed around the grass with white, slight tweak in Curves, selective sharpening and then a border.

[Markulous]

I've gone for a darkening of BG - think maybe too much!


Darken/desaturate yellow (grass), burn highlights (haunches), dodge highlights (edge of head to seperate from haunches)

[silkstone]

A very good doggy portrait, and I also like P-E's version. The leaves and the relatively high saturation of the grass in the original are distractions, so if you didn't want to go as far as removing the background altogether, you could desaturate the greens and use some Gaussian blur.

EDIT/ And while I was typing that, Mark posted his version which follows a similar idea.

[jobe]

My play, I have more or less done the opposite of P-E's
First I ran the lazlo action found here http://kentdesign1.com/images/Lazlo_toning.atn
it doesnt actually need it but I like the toning effect it has.
Then using dodge tool at 100% I darkened the distracting background and unwanted doggy fur,
A bit more dodge and burn at 5% on the fur and eyes.
Cloned out the stray hair across the eye.
Added cheesy border.

Wayne

[P-E]

Just thought I would throw a B&W one in although I probably should leave it for our mono expert

[Angela]

Bertie!!! You mean you actually got him to stay still for a photo Ali!?

I love Jobe's version.....it just needs the lead clip cloning out as well and it would be perfect!

[Dave]

Although I always say don't just "desaturate" a shot, in this example it worked best
So :-

- Desaturate
- Duplicate Layer, change to "Multiply" blend mode & lower opacity to 20%
- Hue/Saturation & change to "colorise" .... move sliderto get tone required
- Sharpened eyes
- Cloned out lead & rear of dog (should take more time on this, but missus wantsto go out )
- Different crop

[Ali]

Oh wow, they are all great. Thank you!

I would never have thought to remove the background completely. I really like the white background of P-E's version and the black of Jobe's. It's very effective.

I'm rather taken with Dave's version as well. All have given me lots to think about and something to try and recreate!

Thanks guys!

[dogdots]

I like jobe's version. I had a dog that looked just like this named Katie . Its amazing what can be done with a photo.

I like when you tell what you did, but can you also tell what software program was used?