Another attempt at That Pro Look

[vladimir]

How did I do now?

[jeeperman]

I am no Pro but I can tell you I like it and it is much nicer than many I have seen come at a cost to a customer. =} Now I do think the white border is either to thick or to bright and becomes a distraction for me. Nice work.

Possibly just a hair hot on parts of the white fur, but not bad.

[Colin Southern]

FANTASTIC.

Don't change a thing.

Except ...

... a little less dead space above the dogs head.

Well done. It gets my C J Southern "Pro Quality" seal of approval.

[Donald]

How did I do now?

You got it!

[digitalboyhr]

nice light and good quality.

may be a little more space on its sight of view but only to test .

nice pic!

[CougarFool]

Beautiful picture. Great lighting. If that was my dog I would be overjoyed with this memory.

[stardelta]

This is an image to treasure, if iI had produced this shot, it would be displayed on my wall at home, with great pride.
Well done, beautiful.

[vladimir]

Thanks for your kind words, everybody!

I will recrop a bit when I get back to my computer. I agree - there is a little too much space on top.
Not so sure about adding space on the left. I suspect it will become unbalanced if I do. I'll try and see.

With overblown whites - it is true, that some (not too many) spots on his face are "too hot".
It's ongoing problem that I am having with photoshop: I start with nicely exposed highlights and then some tweak (overlay blending mode, I suspect) pushes them overboard, and I can't even tell that it happened (or when it happened), until I get back to Lightroom, where it's really easy to see. If you have some advice on how to avoid this problem, or at least how to easily see overblown highlights in photoshop - please do share.

To me this picture is about 8 out of 10.

I subtract 1 for the dog NOT looking into the camera. Because I know - if he did - people would just go "Awwwww", and melt on the spot ...such a handsome guy he is...

I subtract another 1 for the lighting setup, which grossly underexposed his left ear, and left side of the face. I had to dodge some of his left ear to bring it forward. The shadow on the face is still too dark. I did have a reflector on his left, but it wasn't enough, apparently. I'll figure it out one day.

On the other hand - I have excuses! He is NOT an easy subject to shoot. That's quite obvious. Especially to people who tried to make dog's portraits.

And one more thing: if I wasn't on this forum - I would never-ever be able to produce that shot. ALL that is good about it I learned here... Except the model is not really related.

[Nat]

Oh, I am so jealous! This is fantastic. Good job!!!

[Colin Southern]

Thanks for your kind words, everybody!

You earned them!

With overblown whites - it is true, that some (not too many) spots on his face are "too hot".

That's normal. If you try to keep EVERY pixel below 255 then the image as a whole will look under-exposed. So often you'll get specular highlights -- the "trick" is to adjust levels to that fine zone between the specular highlights not degrading the image and the image not looking under exposed.

If you have some advice on how to avoid this problem, or at least how to easily see overblown highlights in photoshop - please do share.

It's not a problem that needs avoiding per se. To see them, just hold the ALT key down when you drag the highlights slider on a levels layer.

I subtract another 1 for the lighting setup, which grossly underexposed his left ear, and left side of the face.

No - you can add the 1 back on. You normally don't want even lighting. If it was under-exposed then normally using the fill light in ACR will reveal the detail. If it also reveal OTHER shadow detail that you don't want, it's usually easier to reveal everything and then burn the bits you want to town down (better for the image in terms of noise too). The brightness control affects the midtones - so usually shadow areas are a balance between the brightness and fill light sliders.

[rpcrowe]

Excellent shot of a beautiful dog....

[Maritimer1]

Wow. I love viewing examples of great pet photography and this one is top notch. Just adding another pat on the back

[Harpo]

Very nice… The pose fits the breed well. I agree, lighting is good. My dog has camera phobia and runs when it turns on, so you got a keeper there!

[vladimir]

You earned them!That's normal. If you try to keep EVERY pixel below 255 then the image as a whole will look under-exposed. So often you'll get specular highlights -- the "trick" is to adjust levels to that fine zone between the specular highlights not degrading the image and the image not looking under exposed.It's not a problem that needs avoiding per se. To see them, just hold the ALT key down when you drag the highlights slider on a levels layer.No - you can add the 1 back on. You normally don't want even lighting. If it was under-exposed then normally using the fill light in ACR will reveal the detail. If it also reveal OTHER shadow detail that you don't want, it's usually easier to reveal everything and then burn the bits you want to town down (better for the image in terms of noise too). The brightness control affects the midtones - so usually shadow areas are a balance between the brightness and fill light sliders.

This is beyond helpful. This is super-duper helpful! The "hold the ALT key" trick is something I was looking for everywhere for a long time, and couldn't find it. Thank you, sir, very much!

[Colin Southern]

This is beyond helpful. This is super-duper helpful! The "hold the ALT key" trick is something I was looking for everywhere for a long time, and couldn't find it. Thank you, sir, very much!

Nice to know there's still a trick or two old dogs like me can teach the up and coming superstars

Normally your levels should be set in ACR though, at which point you can turn on the shadow/highlight alert that turns clipped pixels blue (0) & red (255).

[jcuknz]

Aniother vote for a beautiful dog well photographed .... and he knows he is special!
With the question of the white surround ...I have a theory based on past experience that you can and should use different amounts of white depending on if you are making a print to be viewed by ambient light or an image to be projected or viewed on a monitor. In the later case white is blinding peak white and should be used with great reserve to avoid abusing the viewer. By great reserve I would suggest maximum 5 pixels wide for projected images from the 'normal' pixel size of 1024x768. [ I don't know if that is 'normal' elsewhere but it seems to be a standard for projection over here.] Good projectionists never showed 'open gate'.

[speedneeder]

Vladimir, looks great to me. I agree with Colin on the lighting, this is a very nice light. I can't imagine this setup would work with glamour shot lighting

[vladimir]

Nice to know there's still a trick or two old dogs like me can teach the up and coming superstars

Who is "up and coming superstar"? Me!? No way!
You are just too kind, sir!
Let's do this - when I become a "superstar" photographer, and I'll be writing a memoir about how I got that way - I'll mention Colin Southern as my first and bestest teacher ever! Deal?

[vladimir]

Aniother vote for a beautiful dog well photographed .... and he knows he is special!
With the question of the white surround ...I have a theory based on past experience that you can and should use different amounts of white depending on if you are making a print to be viewed by ambient light or an image to be projected or viewed on a monitor. In the later case white is blinding peak white and should be used with great reserve to avoid abusing the viewer. By great reserve I would suggest maximum 5 pixels wide for projected images from the 'normal' pixel size of 1024x768. [ I don't know if that is 'normal' elsewhere but it seems to be a standard for projection over here.] Good projectionists never showed 'open gate'.

I appreciate the compliment.
I appreciate even more a practical advice on the borders. Because I have no idea what I am doing with the borders, and I go strictly by intuition, and I didn't use them at all until recently. Maybe I'll start another thread in post-processing section on this.

For now I just want to make sure I understand the advice - are you recommending about 0.5% of the longer edge length? Should it change if it's not "blinding peak while"? - i.e. what if shadow is dropped there? What if the picture is mostly white? Should it be 5 pixels of black then?

...Yep, new thread it is...

[Colin Southern]

Hi Vladimir,

I thought your boarder in the above example was 100% perfect -- no issues with over-bright areas what-so-ever. In fact, if you'd be so kind as to tell me how you do them I'd love to copy it!