I know what's wrong with this. (Lot's of things.) But that's what happens when you have someone with you saying "Did you get it? We've got to go."
I've lost most of my steps because they involved repeated spot healing tool, clone tool, blur tool etc. I've cloned out a barbed wire fence and I'm hoping that equals stray twigs and wires etc. If I'd been able to clone out everything I wanted to, that tree would have gone and so would the row of dried up grass. I wanted to get his head against the sky, but he wasn't standing still for long and as I said, I was getting the big hurry up.
I've cropped, used duplicate layers, one black and white blended at low opacity (the grass was crazy green to start with). I selected the background and blurred it, and selected the horse and used Topaz detail.
[Oct. 20th, 2013 01:17:28 AM]
I'm actually surprised this isn't scoring 4.xxx. My PP makes me cringe a bit.
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I kept dithering about this because of my expectations of Black Beauty - glossy black, more aristocratic nose rather than thicker winter pelf ... A lesson to me about preconceptions. Normally I will kiss almost any horse.
Works with the novel. Not crazy about the horizontal line going across the lower part of the background. But you probably didn't have much of an option of going higher or lower to get it in a better place. -6-
Appealing horse portrait which could be ripped from the book. The color palette is a little bland but has an attractive faded quality of an old image. Very well composed with carefully discriminating focus centered on the eye as it must be. 8
A nice enough picture of a horse. There does appear to be some strange artefacts around the horse's chin and body (perhaps from masking). I don't know if you added the forehead marking or it was found like that but it is a nice connection to the books character. 5.
Decent picture. I think I would have liked it more with a different angle in the background. Maybe a closeup of the face with just the sky in the background.
This definitely ties well to the story. The light and the sky work well, but there is some weird spotting on the ground. The horse is alternately a tad over sharp, and a tad over smoothed in spots. 5
I like the vitality and freshness of this. A good looking horsey with a gritty edge to the processing helps it along nicely. Good relationship to title (hard to go wrong here ;)) 6.
Beautiful horse, and perfect model for the challenge! He/she looks a touch over-sharpened though, since it seems to have sharpening artifacts on the face. A slightly different composition without the distracting tree in the background would've helped it too.
Well, I like the texture of the shot. It creates a painterly sort of prettiness on what is otherwise an unimaginative shot. In its favor, it is well composed. I like the trees and fences coming out of his eyes. It's a pleasing placement of the horizon. 5 for giving me something pleasing to look at.
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