[ekim89]

Well in this instance, the effect was post-production...but as Brooke Meyer mentioned, the shot would have to be recomposed to focus on the eyes. Whenever I take a picture of my dog, she tends to want to look up at me and the camera then wants to grab her nose as the focal point. This makes me have to refocus once she is looking up at me and then I get the eyes as the main focal point. I don't have an example on my laptop hard-drive(had to have it re-imaged and lost a bunch of pictures -- luckily I backed them up on an external hard drive), but this is a somewhat decent example I guess...shelly one | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[Schraubstock]

I see blue and greenish posterized snow.

Hi
I am just a bit surprised that you would highlight this observation and make it part of your criticism as it is generally understood that 8 bit highly compressed JPGs will not allow for a smooth colour transition. Converting an image to JPG discards a lot of colour information during compression and therefore blotches and jaggies will always show very prominently in smooth and subtle colour variations such as skies and as in this case snow.

Also changing the colour of the background was only ever meant as an experimental variation and I think I pointed out that I may have overdone a little. (Which makes the blotchiness even worse.)

But you are quite right, as to the colour of the dog's coat none of us will ever know so we are all just surmising.

Finally, I like ekim89's version the best.

Greetings

[riff]

the colour of the dog's coat none of us will ever know

The tongue folks look at the tongue,

I like ekim89's version the best.

Me too.

[Schraubstock]

The tongue folks look at the tongue

Is the colour of the tongue related to the colour of the fur? The colour of the tongue varies to a degree too (as in humans), does it not?

Can you elaborate?

Greetings

The most important thing was starting with a good exposure. Without that, Post Processing is pointless. I adjusted red saturation to "eye", a matter of my completely subjective perception of Golden Retrievers whose coats tend to Red. 023 NRGRR_IGP5928 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! What I did in PP only took 1 or 2 minutes.

Leaving the photograph softer is also a matter of choice. It would be easy to argue that the softness of the dog's coat and nature plus fresh snow is better expressed that way.

A P&S would give much more depth of field due to the smaller sensor so a lot more would be in focus. They key for the P&S would be using manual exposure to compensate for the meter being fooled by the snow

[riff]

Is the colour of the tongue related to the colour of the fur?

I don't know, it may. I can probably find out, a friend has done extensive study on the relationship between coat color and other genetic characteristics. Dog Coat Color Genetics

The colour of the tongue varies to a degree too (as in humans), does it not?

It does but in healthy dogs not into the shades I'm seeing here. Brooke Meyer version has a purpleish tongue (image is to green on my monitor) Your version has kind of a fuschia color, it's close but not a dogs tongue to my eye. At least not a healthy dog. tweet25's original and ekim89's version nail a dog's tongue color.

Cheers

[fg-one]

I hope you don't mind, but I tried to just sharpen the eyes more than the rest of the photo to make them "pop". I hope it shows up to you like it did on my monitor.

Please tell me what you think (good or bad, I don't mind)

Excellent work. Congratulations ! I wish I knew how to do this.

[ekim89]

Excellent work. Congratulations ! I wish I knew how to do this.

Thank you! All I did was a slight midtone adjustment with a curves layer and a slight increase in brightness and contrast. The sharpening was done with a high-pass filter layer and I masked out the areas I didn't want sharpened (everything but the eyes, basically). Finally I applied an overall unshap mask layer. All of this took about 5 minutes in Photoshop CS5 - I was actually in class while I was working on the photo

[tweet25]

this is another photo of Duke, (taken the same day) I cut the edge of his head off, but his eyes seem to be in focus, but not his nose :-( This is his color. I can not seem to get the nose and the eyes both in focus and have a close shot.

Move your ISO from 200 (as taken) to 800 (2 Stops) so you can increase your aperture from 7.1 (as shot) to about f16 (a little more than 2 stops). Your depth of field will increase so both nose and eyes appear in focus. Online Depth of Field Calculator

I think it looks okay as is with some minor post processing.

[tweet25]

thank you Brooke (the photo looks great too!)