Thanks everyone.
Julief, I agree about the collar, and we did loose it after a couple shots. Don't know why I picked this one to play with . . .
James,
I use two different methods to make a similar backdrop.
Using the eye dropper, I sample one color for the foreground swatch and one for the background swatch. Then, in a new document Filter>Render>Clouds. This only works in an 8-bit document though so you can't do it in a new layer on a 16-bit file
. I convert the new doc to 16 bits, which doesn't really do anything but get rid of the annoying "are you sure" dialogue when I drop the new background into the old document as a layer.
From there, it is a matter of masking.
The other way is to create two solid color layers from the sampled colors, set the top layer to "dissolve" until you get some spots of each showing. From there I do a Gaussian blur and then use the transform tool to stretch out the blobs even more. Then, mask away.
I talked with the owner last night and she really likes the white, but then she really likes the brown too, so I'll be doing a couple more. All I need to do is drop the BG layer in and mask it out, so it won't be a lot of work.
This is her favorite of the bunch:
