1st thing 1st always work on a duplicate layer! :-)
1st thing i did was rotate and crop. The vertical glass edge had to be straight.
Then I adjusted curves to the whole image trying to get the BG as white as possible without compromizing my models.
Then I erased most of the glass jarand the phone book, leaving just the contour seen in the final photo. Now part of the vertical line was orange due to the fish's reflection so I selected that portion of it and played with the hue to match the rest of the jar's line.
Using the clone stamp, I got rid of the overex area on the fish.
I dodged both eyes at around 20% and burned the bald spot on my cat.
I selected the cat-side of the photo and used unsharp mask, difuse glow and gaussian blur at 20% opacity on the cat only.
And that's how I got this:
I hope this was helpful. Not having softboxes of a studio, the new rules are helping me a lot. :-)
Somewhere along the way, you gave your cat a little "hair club for cats" treatment too. :)
Great work. I'm hoping someday I'll get this good at doing this kind of work in PS. A couple of questions:
How long did it take you to do this? I always seem to get bogged down with details, and loose patience.
What did working on a duplicate layer do for you? Was it just to have the original available to go back to? Or does it give you some benefit in the final results?
I for one disagree with the "goes too far" crowd; you've fixed some minor defects, that's about it. It is completely true to the image you captured. I love it. Great work.
Edit:
Wait I forgot to say, WTF, a CAT pic wins?? What's this place coming to?? LOL.
I also voted this one best in show...but I appreciate greatly the "author's" coming in and showing us how it was done...great shot and a great lesson ...thank you much
Somewhere along the way, you gave your cat a little "hair club for cats" treatment too. :)
Great work. I'm hoping someday I'll get this good at doing this kind of work in PS. A couple of questions:
How long did it take you to do this? I always seem to get bogged down with details, and loose patience.
What did working on a duplicate layer do for you? Was it just to have the original available to go back to? Or does it give you some benefit in the final results?
Thanks.
Hi Scott
It took me about 45 mins to do the PS stuff.
I work on a separate layer for the reason you mentioned but also for the filters. On a new layer, you can play with the opacity of the layer thus softening the effect.
