Originally posted by Brooke Meyer I photographed a number of rescue events, gave web sized JPEGs to the org's. The dogs in the Golden Retriever Rescue program were typically adopted quickly. Sweet dogs.
I did my normal sort of editing (except I shoot DNGs) instead of JPEGS. I opened the JPEG in Adobe Camera Raw where I spend most of my time and used my default values: Clarity of 25, Lightness of 30 in Parametric Curves, Sharpening to 80. Then opened in Photoshop. Lowered the Red Saturation to eye, Curves to Auto and then backed Red, Green and Blue each to half the Auto Value. Did an adjust Shadow/ Highlights to my default value of 6. Finally, did an output sharpen for Web using my Pixel Genius Plug-In.
I know its sounds complicated but after 4 years of exploring, its just what works for me. My original copy of Photoshop CS3 was a 1/2 price upgrade from an obsolete copy of Elements that was in box with a refurbished Wacom Digitizer. Upgraded to CS5 last summer for the 64 BIT O/S support, event photos were overwhelming the old version.
The Noiseware Plug-In was the best $62 I ever spent on editing software spent, saved me on a portrait shoot with a K10 at ISO 1600, still use on everything The Pixel Genius stuff is partly built-in to Photoshop but I use the plug-in on everything, web or print. It makes a huge difference on presentation. The other one I have to have is Perfect Resize (nee Genuine Fractals) for printing 16x20 and larger.
Hi Brooke
My word, you certainly put a lot of effort into this tweak. I am a bit like you, I have a whole raft of editing software on my computer and I use them all. I find, when I do fine art prints for photographer friends of mine, that for some reason or other certain images respond better to some programs than others. Don't know why but I am certain I am not imagining this.
Now that you got the ball rolling on this pooches portrait I don't feel so bad chucking in my two cents worth. I loaded the OP's original image into OLONEO, a French creation of recent years and I find I am using it more and more. It lets you do corrections in individual colour channels on the fly without creating layers.
I won't go into minute details as to what I did to achieve the attached result, mainly the program is so simple that there is not much to write about.
Forgive me but I find your version just a smidgen too contrasty and the pooch is a bit too red (strong) to my eyes. This should not be seen as a criticism and may merely reflect the difference in your and my monitor setup. I have a lot of money invested in a professional monitor and calibration software and this may explain why.
So taking your image as a cue I adjusted in OLONEO the OP's image by tweaking the red channel's Hue/Saturation ever so little as well as the yellow channel but here a bit more both into positive territory which is done with a slider. Next I increased the Tone Mapping and Detail strength by a few points only. I also increased the blue channel just a bit to change the (I assume) snowy background a bit as it often reflects the blue sky. (I may have overdone this a little) Then I imported the image into PS (CS3) where I sharpened it with the FocalBlade plugin. I consider FocalBlade to be the best sharpening program around. It lets you do lots of adjustments (for example to get rid of black/white sharpening halos and much more). Finally I put the image through another plugin by the name of "PerfectlyClear". (Do download a trial version and put some images through it, you will be blown away.)
Here is my tweak, please tell me what you think. (Good or bad I don't mind).
Greetings