Not AGAIN.....!

[Craig]

Poor Dexter must be sick to death of my camera by now! lol
Unfortunately for him and Honey I am planning on doing a Halloween Photoshoot with them at the weekend. lol  

[Clicker]

He's certainly given you your mojo back Craig... I

He has a cute face..I would be tempted to adapt the background to lose the light blobs on the right and maybe crop it in a square format to lose a bit of the out of focus body to help with the balance ...and tone down the red a bit as it is a bit too bright  for my eyes ...What do you  think...

[Craig]

You are absolutely right Polly,
Its been quite a while since I have had to think about composition, as getting back into photography again has been quite a challenge.
But I 101% agree with you on your edit.
Craig

 

[Clicker]

Thanks ... 

[Ryewolf]

5 hours ago, Craig said:

Poor Dexter must be sick to death of my camera by now! lol

At least with dogs you can get them to sit and look at you - photographing cats is an extremely frustrating. Whenever I try photographing my cat I always try to get on her eye level, even if it means lying down on the floor.

[Korky]

I agree that a square crop would improve the image no end - well worth a try. If you do give it a wazz, be sure to post the edited version.

Korky

[Craig]

Polly has very kindly visited my image above and made what I think is an outstanding edit to it.
This is something I wouldn't have thought of myself.
This goes to show and prove that different view points to a subject be it a simple edit or something more involved can reap dividends.

Thank you Polly for your time and effort that you have put into the image.
You have made in my opinion what was an ok image into a great one.

Craig
 

[Ryewolf]

24 minutes ago, Craig said:

This goes to show and prove that different view points to a subject be it a simple edit or something more involved can reap dividends.

It's what the forum is here for, I think 99% of people who post on the forum are looking for comments, suggestions and ideas to make our photography better.

[Clicker]

Actually  all I did Craig was tweak it a tiny  bit ...  you are being modest   as most of what you see is your photo...  I cropped it  to give it a bit more balance and shift the emphasis almost entirely to his face which is nicely captured.. Out of focus areas can contribute  to depth and perspective in a photo  but  i think there was too much in the original image that was a tad distracting .... the red colour  i found just a bit overpowering  so I  added a duplicate layer and  blurred that with a gaussian blur  enough to reduce the the colour and also desaturated  it a tad  ..   this of course meant that the whole picture  now looked a blur  

So I then selected that   new layer  in the layers palette  ... and added a mask layer ( clicking on the icon a white rectangle with a grey circle in the centre at bottom of the layers palette )

 I then reduced the opacity  of that blurred layer  by sliding it back to about 70 % , enough to see the  dog through that blurred layer. The aim was to remove  that blurred part of the layer to expose the dog so that when i put  the opacity slider back up to 100%,  the background would be blurred but the dog would be as it is on the original photo and sharply in focus.. In order to remove the blurred part from the dog  ensure that the foreground and background colours in  toolbox on the left side of your workspace in photoshop are black and white. Then pick a soft brush with a capacity of 30% or less and with the foreground colour as black, you can paint out the blurred area that covers the dog  being careful  not to go over the edges letting the bright red show again... if you do and you want to make any parts blurry again, switch  the foreground colour to white and use a soft brush again this time to paint the blurry parts back in ..  Hope this  has explained it ...  if not  ... just yell ...

[Craig]

A Brilliant explanation to a brilliant edit.
Thank you so very much again Polly  

[Ryewolf]

2 minutes ago, Clicker said:

so I  added a duplicate layer and  blurred that with a gaussian blur

Well you had me lost here.... mind you I don't have photoshop or lightroom....