Arctic Wolf. C&C welcomed

Since you were shooting RAW and were checking the histogram regularly, it is worth noting that you can recover up to about one full stop of clipping - so, it is not as risky as one might think to "expose to the right". A more correct exposure would have been to compensate with at least +1 1/2. Some of the scales are in 1/4 stops and some are in 1/3 stops, as best I can tell from the different User's Manuals. My camera is in 1/3 stops.

great shot, he / she's a real cutie!
what beautiful creatures they are...
-zacker-

Gotta love the histogram. I'm just learning now what a powerful tool it is. I just wish it was easier to see on the LCD display of the 20D

rgravel wrote:
I'm taking a course at the moment (Photoshop for Photographers) because I'm kind of new to all this, and one of my biggest problem is doing specific selections. It always looks fake; too obvious that I did make a local selection. In this case it would be isolating the wolve from the background, and its very difficult to do around the fur.

But I'll get better at it I'm sure

Thanks for the tips

I'm sure you will, but I wasn't suggesting that you do a selection arround the fur.
Only improve the contrast on the edges.

I gave it a go just to show how that would come out. Not sure you will like it.

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So you just gave it a general contrast adjustment ? I like what it did, as it didn't affect the snow too much, as in turning it too grayish.

Yes.
1. I cropped to what I considered to be a more interesting framing.
2. General levels adjustment, using the sliders per channel, rather than trusting the auto adjustment.
3. Then USM 12 (i think); 60.5; 7 for "local" contrast adjustment, applyied to all the image. This setting of radius ensures only the edges are enhanced. Another way is to use the Local contrast Adjustment in TLR, a sharpening set of actions for PS by gmitchel, our fellow here in the forum. He provides this great tool incredibly for free.
4. Resize to 450 pexels wide and then USM 100 (I think); 0.3; 7.
5. Save for the web.

I don't have PS here right now, so I just tried to put your original photo (cropped) side by side with mine for you to check the diference in the levels, that to my mind provided a more natural look and the contrast of the wolf against the snow and also the detail of the fur.
My version is the one on the right side.

This was heavily compressed to 48K, which I unfortunately could not avoid.

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