Met a cute little Boston for a private sitting today. He wasn't real sure about the big ugly guy dragging all the equipment into his house so we had some play time first followed by some play time with the camera and then got down to business. Here's an outtake from the playtime with camera phase:

Cute dog. Looks like he was getting used to you.

The dog almost looks cut and pasted on to that background...is that the intent? Are you processing 8 bit or 12 or 14 when you pull up the raw files?

14 bit from Lightroom. I keep forgetting to switch ACR in Photoshop for the times I open files directly. It is set to 8 bit. Maybe this will remind me to change it!

The "cut and pasted" look is probably because I didn't fade the top layer enough.

It was shot on solid red seamless paper, but I have an action that goes:

Create new layer,
Select color range - red, (I also have one for blue)
Filter - Render - clouds
Deselect.

From there, I reduce opacity of the newly created layer to bring back some of the contact shadows and the curve of the paper in the background. I probably should have reduced it a little more for this one.

Interesting effect and technique...thanks for sharing.

Cute shot, I'd like to see it without the clouds, would you post a version without?

Sure, give me a few . . .

Here we go. I didn't go back and retouch the scars on his leg in this one either.

My red paper tends to go hot pink too. I only use 1 light with it and I guess I need to move the dogs further off of it to keep it red.

Did they want the scar removed? I never remove things that are part of the animal, unless they are transitory

Yeah, I'll have to darken it up a bit.

I was wishing for more space at this sitting. I only ended up with about 6x8 feet to work with in total. I used two lights, but no back light.

Now that I see this on my "non-photo" machine, it looks a little noisy on the floor.

Yes, they specifically asked for the scar to be removed in those photos that show it. I tried to shoot most of them with his "good side" showing, but there are a couple with the scar visible.

He's a Frisbee champion and is back up and running after knee surgery.

P.S. I wonder if starting with a more burgundy-colored paper would help?