A cat named Goose

[phlyersphan]

Yes, his name is Goose. I have a cat named Goose. (It makes more sense when I explain that the other two are named Merlin and Maverick).

Anyhooo I really like this shot of him, but I have a few critiques of my own and would love your feedback. (I know, you must all get tired of pet shots, and I can't even begin to compare with shots like Kitty Toes from KagoGrl - that shot was awesome!) But, I'm learning

First, I like that I got the focus on his eyes (or eye area, since his eyes are all sleepy-closed) so that his nose is a bit out of focus and the rest of his body is a bit out of focus.

I don't like the background. I wish the mess on my shelves was a bit more blurred. I tried to do a lens blur in Photoshop, but I really need to learn more about post-production, because I couldn't get the lens blur to look natural. It made a very fake looking line along the cat's head.

I wish Goose hadn't laid on his whiskers such that his right-hand whiskers were tucked under his face. I probably could try cloning his left whiskers and putting some on the right, but I think that's a bit beyond my PS skill level at this point!

I don't mind his ears being cut off. I don't think it hurts my ability to know what the photo is of, and I don't think that seeing his full ears would necessarily add anything.

What else could I do to improve this shot? It's straight from the camera, uncropped. I shot it without looking through the viewfinder, as that is MY arm he's laying on! (I do wish I had a nice tan or something, haha).

Thanks!

[KagoGrl]

Hi! For starters, thanks for the kudos in your description! Okay, your photo: it's quite good! Especially when you realize that you didn't actually look through the view finder to take it. I agree with you that the background is quite cluttered, and sadly can't offer any suggestions for blurring the background - I've not master post-production blurring.

I think I'd like to see it cropped just a bit off the left side - to where the paw is I think. But I'm a fan of close crops so that may just be me.

You did focus in the right place - eyes are generally the best place to focus. Next time Goose cooperates play around with different apertures - it's amazing the different looks you can get.

Great shot though! He's a very cute kitty! Good subject.

[Scampi]

phlyer, I love the shot. I do love cats, so it is a bias I know, but I love the angle, and I love Goose's expression. The tucked-in whiskers don't bother me. I like cats with all their quirky-ness, and I think that cat shots that are different like this one make for cool and captivating shots. If anything the top ear cut off is what I linger over, and perhaps the other ear. But then again, it was an off the cuff shot no? I am not very good at post-processing, but I would attempt an unsharp mask only in the facial area, and I would increase the reds and yellows to see if that gave a warmer tone to Goose. There is not much of the eye visible, but the left eye shows a few lines of reflection... have you considered lightening those up a bit? A bit more blur of the background, but not much. I actually like the background, again, it fits nicely. I would not mess around much if at all. I like it as is.

Thanks Phlyer!

Scampi

[RussHeath]

Cute picture, Phylershpan. I have more shots of my cat than I would care to admit . . . What can I say, he's always around and usually agreeable!

You are a very harsh self critic (good way to get better but it might drive you crazy), so I'll just coment on one aspect of your post. You mentioned a "fake line" around the cat's head when you attempted a blur behind him. I'm fairly inexperienced still with photoshop (lazy really, I like to shoot more than edit) but I do know that if you feather your selection, it will help with the hard line. In PS and Elements this can be done many ways, but what I do is right click a selected area after selecting it with the magic selection brush or magnetic lasso, then click "Feathering." The higher number of pixels you choose, the softer the line will be. Around 10 often works for me, but it depends on lots of factors. Hope it helps!

Oh yea, I love the Top Gun cat names. Is the next poor fella going to be Hightower?

[phlyersphan]

Wow - you guys are awesome!!!!

I've learned so much just from working on this lil' ol' picture of Goose!

I think I got all of the Photoshop suggestions in here (and I didn't know how to do ANY of them really!!)

First, I worked on the blur on the background. I never knew you could feather a selection - so I feathered it at 30px around the top of his head and body to prevent that unnatural line I was getting before. I did a lens blur, and pretty much maxed out all of the blur values.

Next, I learned how to use the quick mask tool to make a selection out of the inside of his eyes, and then I just increased the brightness there (which amazingly brought out the green in his eyes! I was shocked - I had no idea that could be done!)

Then, I upped the yellows and reds in the whole picture to warm up Goose's browns a bit. I was really unsure here - I'm not sure if there's some magic formula as to how much yellow/red one should have in a photo, but I went for as warm as I could without making it look fake. (Did I go too far?)

Finally, I used the unsharp mask on his facial area. I think I ended up with a radius of 2 and about 40%. Honestly I have no idea what exactly this tool does. I do know that when I went too far with it, his fur started to look like sticks So I went far enough to make his fur a bit more defined but stopped when it started looking weird.

Oh - and I cropped the left side down to his paw. I like the tighter crop, now that I see it

OK, so that's my very newbified version of what I did!

Here's what I ended up with:



Thanks so much for the tips!! I'm learning how to do things I didn't even know were possible

[jiminyClickit]

phlyersphan,

Quite a difference; this is the main secret to good editting, practice and more practice. While you have the background selected, you can also either lighten or darken it and unsaturate some, both lessening the distraction of it. Here it's brighter, so even blurred, it still draws attention. Otherwise, well done.

[phlyersphan]

(More tricks I didn't realize!) Thanks, jiminy!

OK... I desaturated the shelves behind Goose and darkened them a bit:

[jiminyClickit]

phlyersphan,

Do you now find your attention more on Goose? Foreground, middleground, background are light, midtone and dark. That works here.

[phlyersphan]

He definitely is more the immediate draw of my attention (short of getting rid of those shelves entirely!)

I was able to REALLY tell the difference when I opened these 2 photos up side by side in Lightroom. After seeing the darkened version, the un-darkened version pops so much (in such a bad way) that I may have said, "Yikes!" out loud!

Thanks very much to everybody for the tips!

I think I will go through my photos and see what others I might want to play around with

[jiminyClickit]

phlyersphan,

Lately I have to be careful not to lose too much of the background, or making it too dark. It becomes personal taste after you've pushed focus onto the main subject.