Please Help Me With PhotoShop

[GTaudiophile]

I was looking at posts at DPreview.com today when I ran into some lovely dog pics taken by Thesun with his EFS 10-22.

Example

Now, here is the original of the pic above:

Original

Now, I really like his style, so I got him to share some of his technique with me:

I first made a background copy. I enhanced contrast and lightened the copy with levels. Added layermask (hide) to the copy and started to bring out the dog from it's shadow! Then I selectively saturated (maybe to much) the image with a mask. Flatten. New layer from background and some heavy noisereduction 5-10 (no color NR) and local contrast (USM, large radius) on that one. Finally I blended the layers 50%.

And he expounded on the above with...

When you choose to mask with ?hide all?, the top layer will look like the background. You have to use a white or whiter than black standard brush (depending on how much effect you want, White=100%) to bring back the effect of the levels adjustment. In other words brush the dog by selecting different sizes and shades of gray on your brush, you will be able to carefully lighten the dog without changing the background.

Layer> layeradjustment > hue and saturation, enables you to remove the saturation from parts of the picture with a black brush. I used this on neutral parts (white, gray) of the dog.

Noise reduction: On a small file like the one I posted, a value about 5 ( the rest of the rulers to zero) would be enough, but on a large file I would apply 10, maybe two times over?

Local contrast is applied with the Unsharp mask tool, but with a large radius. Ca. 30 for a small file like mine and about 100 for a large file. I`m not sure about the amount, but you will see the effect when you try this. Be careful not to use too much, blown highligts can be a problem.

Now, I know how to do a lot of the above but certainly not all.

Any PhotoShop experts here who might want to walk me even more step-by-step through the above process?

Thanks in advance!

 

[troytime]

which part do you need help with?

 

[GTaudiophile]

I suppose the masking stuff...really have never played with that.

 

[troytime]

masking is awesome

its basically a way to 'cover up' the contents or effect of a layer (even an adjustment layer)

to use it, select the layer to mask in the Layers pallet, then click the little icon at the bottom of the layers pallet to "add layer mask" (its a grey box, with a white circle)
i don't know the keyboard shortcut, if i did, i'd tell ya

a white box should appear on that layer, and your two color choices should have switched to black/white

now you can use the brush tool to mask out the layer with the black color, or use the white color to 'unmask'
your other tools of the trade are still effective, selection tools, brush modes, etc
you can even apply your mask with different opacities or blending modes

 

[GoingUp]

that dog looks like a cartoon

 

[PowerRanger]

You should really learn about masking. It is an essential tool. With masking you are able to make extreme (or not) effects to certain parts, and not affect other areas. The concept is very simple, basically just brushing on or off the effects you've applied. Troytime basically framed out what's necessary to get started with masking.