C&C on Cat Images

sojourn · Mar 7, 2010

I really like this RAW format! These are the first of the type for this subject.

Seems we have a lot of cat pictures lately, but they do make good subjects. I finally snapped a good image of my wild-cat, Fiila, draped over a log in my garden.

She is so well camouflaged she doesn't pop out of the picture. Anything I can do do bring her out without oversaturating the image?

And, a closeup of Jasper. I know that perhaps his head should be a bit lower in the right corner, but have I given enough 'look' space in this full frame shot?

I have cloned out some distracting background parts and applied a bit of contrast to the eyes, but that is just about it.

Overread · Mar 7, 2010

Hmm with the first you can make an animal pop a little bit more with some selective editing. Use a contrast brightness layer to boost the contrast and brightness over the cat only a very tiny amount - a saturation layer can also help with this. The idea is that you are bringing out more punch with the subject, but doing it with very small amounts so that it does not end up looking out of place with the background and foreground elements. Be carefull as well for there are some bright spots on the cat and you won't want to end up with them getting much brighter (our eyes go to bright points first - which is not so bad in this shot as one bright part is the side of his face).

As for the second its not just giving him room to move into but making sure that the room is not equal to the weight on the deadside of the shot - in this shots case you are right he needs to be more in the right hand corner - otherwise the space he has to move into on the left is very similar to the size of the space on the right and it sort of seesaws your view and gives the impression of dead space on the right. Do use the crop tool when you need to - sure we all like to get things in camera as perfect as we can and when that falls short use the editing tools to their best abilty.