Cassius and the Orange Couch

[VanessaS]

My most cooperative subject - Cassius.

[JPS]

Hi Vanessa,
I don't think I've had the pleasure to welcome you to CiC; so a big welcome from me.
Thanks for sharing your picture, he looks very relaxed and laid-back. Cool cat

Regards
John

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Cassius,

Could you do me a favour and tell your 'mum' (Vanessa) that she missed out Part 2?

Part 2: How to make an attached thumbnail appear larger and inline

1. Click the image to make it bigger
2. Right-click on the image and select "Copy Image Location" (in Firefox) or "Copy Shortcut" (in IE)
3. Click "Edit Post" and position the cursor where you want the image to appear, then use the "Insert Image" icon and Paste (Ctrl+V) the shortcut into the dialog and click "OK"
4. Click "Save Changes" button.

However, I hope you appreciate that she got your eyes in focus and blurred the background nicely.

Hi Vanessa,

Please forgive my my late night (attempt at) humour

Welcome to the CiC forums from ....

[rpcrowe]

Hi Vanessa, what a lovely name. I wanted to name our daughter Vanessa but my wife opted for Anne. While Anne is a lovely name, my daughter said one time that she'd like to be called Vanessa!

Anyway, that aside, Cassius is a great looking cat! He is elegant and very-very imposing!

I think that he is underexposed a bit. However, you might not want to just lighten the image globally because of the bright reflection on the back of the couch. Using a layer mask might be the way to do it.

He's such a handsome guy that I'd like to see him better...

[VanessaS]

Thank you for the welcome and the kind words about my Cassius. I am having a bit of a challenge with all the options available for uploading pictures and I am not sure which is the preference of the forum. For my hello thread I used the tinypic option below vs the option to attach a picture. I am going to try to use that one because it seems to work better embedded. I just hope they aren't too large.
I have just purchased my Photoshop program and I haven't really had a chance to learn the tricks properly. I could not figure out how to apply another layer because my options are greyed out. I do want to make my Cassius as stunning as he can be so I gave my limited knowledge a shot and got the below result using midtone and shadow adjustments. I also sharpened him up a bit.
Is this better? I like it more.

[rpcrowe]

Quite an improvement...

Cassius reminds me quite a bit of my Felix who passed away six years ago...

[Dave Humphries]

I have just purchased my Photoshop program and I haven't really had a chance to learn the tricks properly. I could not figure out how to apply another layer because my options are greyed out.

Hi Vanessa,

From this, it sounds like you bought (Photoshop) "Elements" and I guess you may have opened a RAW file, imported it to Elements in 16 bit mode - that's usually what causes it.

That's not to say you're doing anything wrong, I work like that too.
When you've done as much processing as Elements will allow in 16 bit, you need to convert to 8 bit to continue.
If you try to do certain things, Elements asks if you want to do this (e.g. if you attempt to clone).
Unfortunately for Layers, it isn't so obvious - it's just greyed out.

When you want to use Layers, first go to menu bar, choose Image, then Mode, then 8 bit - it'll do the conversion then you should find Layers is no longer greyed out.

I am having a bit of a challenge with all the options available for uploading pictures and I am not sure which is the preference of the forum. ~ For my hello thread I used the tinypic option ~ I am going to try to use that one because it seems to work better embedded. I just hope they aren't too large.

TinyPic is preferred.
As the last part of your processing, if you downsize and then sharpen, as long as it is no more than 1000px in height (ever) and upto 1600px in width, it'll be fine.

Full story here;
HELP THREAD: How can I post images here?

Cheers,