The Buck Stops Here

[CNelson]

I know it's not a great shot because of focus and sharpness issues but I really like it because of the angle on the deer. I'm above looking down when he glances up at me. It was a quick shot through a double pane window and I don't think he saw me so much as sensed movement through the glass. Animals don't do well with windows...ask any bird with a bent beak. The background was ugly with garden hoses and clutter so I extracted him and put a shot of dirty cement behind him and added a bit of shadow under him. Not fine art but fun art and a joy to have such a view from my bedroom window. I really regret that I didn't have time to set the shot up better and for the double pane glass but sometimes you take what you can get.

Chuck

[ScoutR]

Very Nice Chuck, I love the eye contact, and if this was mine I'd be stunned silly at the sharpness, the background looks great to me. I like the choice of colour. My only complaint if it was my shot would be that I cut off the hooves.

Beautiful animal, and great shot in my books.

Wendy

[GeorgeM]

Nice picture. Yeah, sometimes you have to take what you can get.

[FrankMi]

I love the stance and Ut-Oh expression! Great shot, Chuck - it pays to have a camera readily at hand at a time like this.

[CNelson]

Thanks for the kind words all. This will always be one of those "only if..." pictures. Good enough to share with friends but not going anywhere.

Chuck

[FrankMi]

Thanks for the kind words all. This will always be one of those "only if..." pictures. Good enough to share with friends but not going anywhere.
Chuck

Hi Chuck, I was really impressed with your capture of the buck and was disappointed that it might get trashed simply because of the in-camera cropping missed the right hoof by just ‘that’ much. I am hoping that we can salvage this marvelous shot so I gave it a try in Photoshop.

In case you want to try this on the original, after making several copies of the original layer in the layers panel, here are the steps I took.

1. The first thing I did was to increase the canvas size by about 100 pixels to get some room to play.

2. Next, realizing that the entire background was non-descript, I used the clone tool with a hard brush to fill in the area between the original image and the new canvas size. I went back with the clone tool and a soft brush to mask any edges that the hard brush created.

3. The left front hoof was missing a piece of the inside toe so I cloned the outside toe to complete the left hoof.

4. Now for the right front foot. The deer’s left and right feet are not exactly identical, however, at this scale, the difference is too small to be noticeable, so I used the clone tool to duplicate the left leg to complete the missing right leg. Some gentle touch-up was done so that the coloring matched the right leg, again using the clone tool.

At this point we have recovered the ‘missing parts’ but the deer almost blends into the background as the general coloring, texture, and contrast is so close. We really needed to get some separation between the deer and the background. This can usually be done by changing one or more of the following: brightness, contrast, color tone, and/or sharpness.

Before we can make any of these kinds of changes we need to select the deer and create a mask. This is what the completed mask (and some Adjustment Layers I’ll talk about in a minute) looks like.



Once the deer is selected, we can apply changes to the deer and background separately. We’ll start with the deer. We could just add an Adjustment Layer and tweek the Brightness/Contrast but I felt we needed to pop the detail just a bit as well so I followed Willie Bau’s tutorial; High Contrast and Detail Effect using dodge and burn technique:

High Contrast and Detail Effect using dodge and burn technique.

We can now control the effect of the technique with the Opacity slider on the Contrast Layer in the Layers Panel above.

That leaves the background. I added Adjustment Layers for Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, and Color Balance. After playing a bit to suit taste, I left the Hue/Saturation at default, added a little green tint, decreased the contrast and increased the brightness. In the end, I didn’t change the sharpness/blur of the image as it wasn’t needed. Hopefully I left enough room so that you can crop if you so desire.

Here is how it ended up, but by using the same techniques on the original, you can adjust the results to suit your own taste. I hope this helps!

[Nicola]

excellent capture Chuck!
I think you have cropped one of the rear legs' hoofs (right leg)...

[CNelson]

Frank, you did a great job....appreciate the detailed description of the steps you took too. Nicola...because it was a quick shot when the deer looked up I cut off the right front foot in the camera...that foot was close to the bottom window sill and I may not have been able to get it all anyway but I shot too quickly to check before I "clicked." The right rear hoof was embeded in gravel and leaves...I just didn't bother to try to clone one in. Frank did a great job of supplying a hoof and foot for a complete picture.

Thanks to all

Chuck

[ScoutR]

Very nice Frank, and I too thank you for posting all the steps. I want to figure out how to work with layers in the near future and this sample will be an excellent tutorial. Thanks so much. Nice job, and of course Chuck did a great job to get this shot and fill in the background in the first place so to me this is not only a great shot of a beautiful animal, but also an excellent learning experience.

Wendy

[FrankMi]

Hi Chuck, thank you for the kind words, it would have been a shame to loose such a beautifull image.

Hi Wendy, let me know if I can be of any help you in your quest to learn layers and masking.

[ScoutR]

Hi Wendy, let me know if I can be of any help you in your quest to learn layers and masking.

Thanks Frank, I planned to master some of this stuff last winter and never got around to it. Hopefully this winter I will find the time, and then I will certainly be needing lots of help. I have to wait until I know I have the time to stick with it.

Wendy