Processing Zoey

Another photography post. Same disclaimer as before — I’m not a professional, and I’ve got plenty left to learn.

I snapped a quick shot of our dog Zoey the other day. It wasn’t perfect, but I figured I’d play around and see what I could do to salvage it. Here’s the original jpeg from the camera.

The first thing I did was open the RAW file and adjust white balance and color saturation. I also cropped and realigned it a bit.

Next step: Used Photoshop to remove that bit of Styrofoam in the lower right (with the clone stamp tool). I also added a contrast layer and used a hue/saturation layer to selectively brighten the reds, reducing Zoey’s chronically red eyes. Finally, I used the dodge tool to brighten her eyes a bit.

I added another masked layer to sharpen Zoey’s face. It can’t completely compensate for the blurriness of the photo — I took this shot inside, without much light, and the shutter speed was just too slow. But I think it helps some.

At this point, I just start playing. I increased the contrast of her freckles, desaturated a bit, and added a vignette effect. I probably get carried away and overprocess things, but I’m having fun.

More playing — I added an overlay layer and tweaked the saturation again.

I could keep going. This stuff is addictive. But my kid really wants someone to inflate the wading pool on his last day before school starts, so I suppose I should head outside and do that.

Anyway, I hope this was at least moderately interesting to folks!

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