Hello Mr. Squirlle

[blzrd]

So I was at the zoo the other day taking pictures and this one jumped out at me. I wish I would have had my aperature just slightly higher so I could get his nose in there, but overall I like the shot. What do you all think?

[Mischa]

Funny picture!
I share your thoughts about a higher aperture.
Also the background looks a kind of foggy.

[Nicole]

Cute picture.

I'll agree about the nose as well. I think that I'd like to see the picture with a little more contrast so that it doesn't look as foggy. Have you tried playing with the levels at all to try to bring Mr. Squirlle out from the background a bit?

[blzrd]

The foggyness is there because the glass between me and the squirrel was not clear. it was kinda odd.....

[Firemaine]

Originally Posted by blzrd

So I was at the zoo the other day taking pictures and this one jumped out at me. I wish I would have had my aperature just slightly higher so I could get his nose in there, but overall I like the shot. What do you all think?

blzrd: I hope you don,t mind but I just had to mess with this photo a little. His expression just said please clean me up.
All I did was raise the concentration and saturation a little along with the sharpness. And this is what I got.

[blzrd]

That looks way to orange for my taste.

[Nicole]

You know, I don't know why I didn't give you an example of what I was talking about the first time around, blzrd And that is very strange about the glass not being clear, it wasn't in need of a good cleaning, was it?

Ok, so, since the previous example was too orange for you, this is what I've done (fair warning, mine might be too green lol):



I sharpened the picture by using Unsharp Mask (Amount 100%, Radius 2, Threshold 4).
I then added a curves layer set to Medium Contrast
I added a Selective Color layer and decreased some of the magenta on the red channel.
I finally added a Levels layer and moved the black slider to the right, and the white slider to the left slightly.

I'm thinking that this might be too green-ish though, now that I'm looking at it, so you could do other adjustments with the Selective Color layer until you got the most accurate colors possible. I still think he's one cute little squirrel though.

[ELAY]

The pic of the squirrel is so great that it is worth trying to figure out how best to adjust this shot. The colours are surprisingly tough to get right.

The levels adjustment is key, to get rid of the filmy look from the window. From there, noise reduction, smart sharpening, and then a greenish cast. Could not really get rid of it using channel mixer or by adjusting colour balance without causing other problems, so my last effort was to go into GIMP's filter pack, and to see if any of their pre-loaded hue filters helped. Think I like this result best (blue filter).



THanks for posting the photo and for letting us fool around.

Cheers,

EL

[xxpinballxx]

Elay I like yours....it looks like natural colors....still too bad the tip of the nose isn't in focus more.

[jiminyClickit]

blzrd,

You can save this and get a nose that appears to be more in focus. Clone fur from bridge of nose, following direction of growth. Adjust highlight to add "wetness." The yellow can be brought down by adjusting (approximately) 50% cyan, 30% magenta and 10% blue.