Tiger Touchup

[daveallyn]

This is a tiger I shot at Brookfield Zoo in Aug '10. I have started playing around with editing and decided to spruce it up a bit.

Removed the plant between the paws, Cropped in a bit, blurred the rock background, removed a few blades of grass by his belly that I didn't like. threw a Vibrance adjustment on it all to enhance his color a bit.

Thoughts?

[BigFuzzy]

If I didn't know what to look for, I might not have noticed the changes on the new version.. Except for maybe the background blur, but background blur is really difficult to do well.. really really difficult.

So well done.. and good job using vibrance and not saturation, looks more natural.

It's definitely an improvement.

[daveallyn]

Thank you. I wasn't wanting to change the photo, as much as fine tune it to make it a bit better. Kinda like pruning fruit trees. I have a bunch of branches one the ground, but can't tell exactly where they came from. It takes time, and if done right, it looks better, but not exactly sure how.

Thanks for the feedback!

[gingindhs]

I love what you have done here. I would have done similar things I think, except I would not of thought to take out the plants between the legs. I think doing that has made a huge improvement. Well done.

[daveallyn]

Thank you. I am starting to play with photoshop more and more, and playing with what I can remove without making it too obvious. Even at the time I took the shot I didn't like the plant, but didn't feel comfortable removing it years ago.

[D Alishouse]

This looks great because it's subtle. Sometimes it's tempting to go really crazy with editing software but I think you did an excellent job cleaning it up and the color looks great. It's funny because it changed it from just a picture of a Tiger into something you could put in a calendar.

Are you teaching yourself or have you had training in Photoshop?

[superduperwesman]

Edit looks good. I personally like the original composition better (wouldn't have cropped) but everything else is definitively an improvement.

[daveallyn]

Originally Posted by D Alishouse

This looks great because it's subtle. Sometimes it's tempting to go really crazy with editing software but I think you did an excellent job cleaning it up and the color looks great. It's funny because it changed it from just a picture of a Tiger into something you could put in a calendar.

Are you teaching yourself or have you had training in Photoshop?

Thank you! I think subtle is better. I have been watching YouTube vids and found a set of instructional videos (don't remeber who off the top of my head). I like to watch techniques that I may never do (for example, Breast augmentation), just to see how they use different tools (in this example: Liquify), and then apply those tools to what I am trying to do.

Originally Posted by superduperwesman

Edit looks good. I personally like the original composition better (wouldn't have cropped) but everything else is definitively an improvement.

I cropped for two reasons. I was having problems getting the front foot cleaned up with the plant, and decided to eliminate it along with the sidewalk that didn't seem natural to me. Also It is now a 4x6 size if I ever decide to print it for an album.