Enhancing photos to help foster dogs get adopted, please help!

[maia160]

Hi all! I'm a new foster mom of two silly lab mixes. I'm volunteering with a rescue group in the south that pulls dogs from high kill shelters and transports them to the north to no-kill rescue groups. My two fosters were pulled one day before they were scheduled to be euthanized. I give the dogs a place to stay for a few weeks until transport, evaluate their behavior, provide some preliminary training, fatten up the skinny pups, and, of course, give them a lot of attention. These wonderful dogs often come from abusive backgrounds and are usually unsure of themselves after being in a shelter environment. I'm doing everything I can to give my girls a head start on finding a great home.

Right now I have a one year old lab mix, Petunia, and a three month old lab mix puppy, Little Foot. (I know, lame names, but I didn't get to choose!) Petunia was dumped by her owner who didn't want to "deal with her anymore" and I suspect that she was hit often. Little Foot is an adorable baby with one deformed leg. She was found as a stray and turned into animal control. She walks and plays well, but often topples over as her front left leg is short and doesn't have a formed foot. She has the biggest happiest personality and really doesn't let her leg hold her back. Both of these dogs are going to be difficult to adopt; Petunia is a large black lab mix and she will have to deal with what the shelters call 'big black dog' syndrome. Black dogs are less likely to be chosen by potential adopters. Little Foot is also a black dog and will have to find a person that will love her deformity and all.

Here are the photos provided by the shelter (just so you guys can see them, I won't be using these as their adoption photos):

Petunia at Animal Control:




Little Foot at Animal Control:



The rescue group I'm working with asked me to provide some photos. Both of the dogs really hate my camera and they usually move too fast to get a good shot so I'm pulling stills from video recordings. The quality is not the best but it's what I have to work with right now. Petunia will be leaving Saturday so I'm working on her photos right now. I'm a total newb at Photoshop and need help making the photos look better. I don't really have time to go through the entire PS manual so I'm hoping that someone can give me some pointers. (I promise, in the future, I'll go through the manual and these forums for tips but I'm under a time crunch right now and I'm exhausted from getting up several times a night to potty train a young puppy).

Here is the original cropped still of Petunia that I'm working with:



Here is my work in progress on the same still:



I've changed the coloring but I'm not sure if it looks right. I've also worked on enhancing those gorgeous eyes. Using her natural eye color, I enhanced the iris and added some highlights to the left eye to make it look more alive. I really want people to be drawn into her eyes. I've tried to edit the background as the window behind her is distracting but can't seem to pull her out of the picture without it looking 'off'. I would also like to change the colors of the walls and the couch to something that makes her stand out more but still looks natural. I haven't even started on that yet as I'm still trying to figure out how to fix that window. Also, any other tips for making this photo look better are more than welcome.

So, help, please! I'm sorry for the length of this post but I really want everybody to know these wonderful pups! Thanks in advance.

 

[Hoogle]

definately do not post the 2nd image that dog just looks evil. I would say though nothing wrong with your enhancements the whole picture just looks sad and no one will want to adopt a sad dog, I would suggest getting them to take some more happy pictures...

 

[maia160]

ha! The second pic does make Little Foot look like a little terror. I actually love that pic, though, as it shows such personality. I've taken to calling her T, short for T-Rexx. She really is an adorable puppy and I'm working on getting better shots of her. She's very young, only about 6 lbs although she looks larger in the pic with an innocent puppy face and a big fat puppy belly. I'll also be working on more shots of Petunia. It's just really hard to get a good pic as she doesn't like cameras and gets upset when she hears the video recorder beep to start recording. A photographer I am not but I'm trying.

 

[Steve]

Your doing a fine job on these.
That last image came out just fine.

 

[Paul]

I hope you don't mind but i closed 'little foots' mouth a little gave a smile rather than a growler

 

[maia160]

I don't mind at all! She looks less like a munster in your version.

So, I've been working some more on my pic and I would welcome your opinions on how to improve it.



I finally figured out how to replace the window in the background but my edges still look a little rough. I've used the blur tool to help integrate the edges but I still think it could be improved. How can I get the edges to look better? Also, what do you think of the color change on the cushion? Lose it, keep it, refine it?

 

[Zeealex]

i like the new version! it's allot easier on the eye

i had a quick mess around with the image and tried to improve it, but it's your opinion if it's an improvement or not.

 

[maia160]

I like how you increased the contrast (I think that's what was done anyway). So, I tried that myself and here are the results:



I'm still not happy with the edges on the left side of the cushion and around her head. Any pointers on how to make them look better? Thanks so much for any help.

 

[maia160]

Oops! Not sure why two pics posted! Ignore the bottom one.

 

[ibclare]

Do you have Bridge so that you can Browse in Bridge? This is an option under file>open. Bridge allows you to make vibrancy and sharpening change which I think is all the image needs now. You can of course do that with adjustments in Photoshop. When I do adjustments on this kind of project, I do them as layer adjustments so that I can go back and tweak as needed, or even discard altogether. You've done a great job with the eyes and the BG. I think the pillow is fine.

EDIT Here: To clean up those edges between pillow and head, I'd suggest one of 2 things: use the rubber stamp (clone) tool with a hard edge at 100% opacity, clone from the green and put that edge up to the dog's head. That will sharpen it. Another way would be to use the pen tool or the polygonal lasso, make the sharp edged selection, invert the selction and brush the pillow or BG color on the edge. The selection inverted will keep the painting confined to the selected area.

As for the edges there are a couple different ways; probably more. You can make a selection of the dog, click the layer mask icon (or go to layer>layer mask>reveal all. The get a soft brush - zero hardness, low opacity - and brush along the edges, switch the black and white on the mask till you get the edges as you want them. That would be my first approach. You can also take the selection, refine the edges (sometimes when you make an intricate selection where you've gone in and cleaned up the borders and so forth, it pays to go to select>save selection, name it and save it so you needn't repeat that process), select inverse and go to blur>gaussian blur and put a small amount of blur into the background (not the pillow btw, just the BG).

I do agree with Hoogleman that the sad image may not be a good sell. But then, I'm one of those people who will not watch or listen to the American Humane Society's current advertisement. I don't need my heart strings pulled anymore. It's a cruel ad and treats people like imbeciles if you ask me. [jumping off my soapbox now] :mrgreen:

 

[maia160]

Thank you so much for your post! You got me on the right track. I used the guassian blur and I think it looks good. Unfortunately, the color of my cushion changed and I'm not too happy about it but, enough for tonight. Also, I finally realized that I had removed small stray hairs around the edges when I was replacing the BG; I think that is what was making the edges look off. They were too clean. So, I used the smudge tool to pull out 'hairs' and blended them in.





Let me know if I can do anything else to improve the pic. I'm sort of afraid that I've went overboard but I can't be objective as I've been working on this for too long.

I've always had to turn off those humane society ads you are talking about! I guess I'm not seeing how sad she looks in this pic as I was playing with her when I took it. She was giving me that 'you have my attention' look that labs use and was about to grab a toy out of my hand. It's hard to step back and see what everyone else is seeing but I trust what you are telling me. I probably will just keep this pic for personal use. Tomorrow, I plan to grab some more shots of her and then I'll use what I've learned to edit them.

 

[maia160]

Ugh! I keep attaching two images. I think I know what I'm doing wrong but I can't edit my post. Ah, well. Again, ignore the second image.

 

[Paul]

Good choice of tool, smudge and liquify are my heroes - good gear isn't it.

 

[ibclare]

Nice work. We all spend way too much time on some projects. It's part of learning, experimenting. I think you're doing great. Not sure how the hue of the pillow changed. I know I've had some real "huhs?" when working lots of layers and adjustments. Just select it and play with color balance or hue/sat. The next one will go faster.

And I get it with the "pay attention to me" or "god I'm obsessed with you" looks!

That's one of mine in my avatar; sometimes I think her mouth is that big! (the blonde is not me).

 

[Paul]

Dogs are awesome companions, way better than sly/lazy good for nothing puddy cats.

 

[maia160]

Dogs are awesome! I have two Labradors in addition to the two fosters. My house is full right now.

Today, the rescue asked for pics of Little Foot so I had to put Petunia on hold to get them. LF is finally okay with the camera and it also stopped raining today; so, I was able to get some good shots of her. It was a messy job as the ground was still wet.

Wow, it is so much easier to edit the photos when I actually have quality pics from the start. It went so much faster as I didn't have to edit so much out and I've already had a lot of practice with my 'awful' pic. I've sent these off to the rescue as they need to get them up on their site asap; but, I welcome any suggestions that might help in the future.

Before (pic 1)


After (pic 1)


Before (pic 2)


After (pic 2)


Before (pic 3)


After (pic 3)


See! She's not evil!

 

[Paul]

Sorry i couldn't resist the face is so cute.

 

[maia160]

That looks great! What did you do to it?

 

[Paul]

Make a new layer of your original, turn that layer into black and white then overlay the two images, play around with settings (light/sharpness) bobs your aunty.

 

[Paul]

And the poor paw shot.