John - nice shots. I agree with Jim about the over sharpening and saturation. I like the redo of Cassidy, but like you, would like to see the intensity of the backdrop retained. It would be an easy thing to mask Cassidy and bring back your saturation and sharpening on the backdrop.

Jim & I have the unique advantage (or disadvantage!!) of working a lot with black dogs and because of that, we've had to develop a skill set both in capture and PP that takes a bit of practice for other photogs to "click" with.

One thing is the blue cast, which is essentially a WB issue and is easy to correct. I know you like to do close-up big head shots, and so do I. I really like the capture on Sundance. It's a nice big "in your face" shot. After you adjust the WB, and back off on the sharpening, there is one more pet peeve of mine with dark dogs. Sundance's lower lip just jumps out at you. This can be a big issue with black dogs, because in several places like the lip areas there really is little hair cover and those areas tend to get a pinky, magenta-y (if that's a word) cast to them, particularly if you've boosted the saturation overall. I would duplicate the layer (I always do that so I don't screw up what I like about the original layer) and use the desauration tool (it's in the same flyout as dodge and burn) and with a soft brush at low opacity start to desaturate that lip area, maybe go up into the upper lip area right underneath the nose, inside the nostrils and perhaps just a pinch in the white area of the eyes just to tone down the the little pinky/redness in that area. I like that big old head shot and with a few tweaks it could be great.

Have you tried a B&W conversion of the Sundance shot as it? It is very contrasty and might make for a nice B&W.

I'd like to see more of the shoot -- particularly the "chicken" shot!! Good job!!!

Julie Ford

Thanks for the comments, very helpful.

WB issue, in my studio I use a WhiBal but I did not bring it to Jim's place. I have had problems with blue in dark animals, mostly Moose in overcast light.

My normal workflow for correcting WB when I do not have a WhiBal shot is to do a threshold layer, find the whitest white, blackest black and set points. Then in levels layer do a white point and black point. Also do a gray point.

With Rotties, this does not work, no whites other than the catchlights. For blacks, the area inside the nose is blackest but that does not correct the color cast. There does not seem to be a neutral gray either.

I corrected the color cast with a saturation layer, choose blue and reduced blue to zero. But that reduces overall blue...

How would you correct the blue case in Rottie photos such as these?

John,
I find that it's pretty easy to do in ACR by simply adjusting the color temp. But, in lieu of that, I use PictoColor ICorrect OneClick as a PS plugin and it adjusts to neutral by simply clicking on the blue highlight. I highly recommend it as a fast, easy way to color-balance your images if you're having a problem with WB either in the camera or in the NEF processing.

Jim

the plugin is pretty neat, it does remove the blue if you click in the bluish tinted area of the black coat, it seems to really change the background color but I guess I could do a mask of the dog to isolate the corrections.