Christmas Photo

My nine year old and his dog Coco.

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No one has any comments, come on guys good or bad, I can take it?

wow...4 days ago..and no one?
I'm just seeing this, so probably a good thing ya brought it back up...things go to the second page so fast at times that many miss images..
I think its a really sweet Christmas shot..a little dark in the middle by his eye . Also the dog comes out better lit then the boy does and kind of throws it off a bit to me as to what the main subject is. But still very nice..I love the expressions on both the dog and the boy.

i like this shot. i would like so see a slightly tighter crop.

expression seems genuine and that's a great looking boxer

this is sweet, only thing I would do is dodge the right eye area as It's a bit dark... but it could be my screen

Nice picture, I like the straight dog and sweet boy contrast. It made me smile. Very touching.
The only prob. I have is the dog is right on focus, with lovely details and colors, while the boy is slightly oof. I suggest a vigneting th bring more attention to the boy.

also solved a slight red-cast. very minor, and still visible on the bright whites. Will be even more visible on print.

I followed also the excellent sugestion of mercersmoments

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Thank you for your comments and editing, please tell me how you brightened the eye area. Also what could I have done to prevent this shadowing in the first place? I have a small 2 light set with soft box and umbrella, softbox was to the left I believe and umbrella was to the right. Would it have helped to have raised one of these lights? Thanks again,

You've got a good start, here's what I'd do (just personal preference).
It looks a bit on the cool side to me, not sure if I managed to fix that with color cast entirely but I hope I got most of the blue cast off.
Then I dodged his eyes to lighten them just a bit and ran USM on them (16, 35, 0).
I ran just a slight levels on it, 5, 1.10, 245. And I noticed when I zoomed in that the ribbon on the dog was fastened with a safety pin, so if you're gonna print that I'd fix that with a little clone tool.
Other than that its really cute.

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Mercy299 wrote in post #4729067
Thank you for your comments and editing, please tell me how you brightened the eye area. Also what could I have done to prevent this shadowing in the first place? I have a small 2 light set with soft box and umbrella, softbox was to the left I believe and umbrella was to the right. Would it have helped to have raised one of these lights? Thanks again,

I will try to explain the eye thing. not easy because of the site policy we cannot post ten screencaptures to go step by step. If I go too fast on a point, just ask for more detailed instructions.

There are many ways to do this stuf. Most probaly I did not go the best way.
Anyway, this is what I did.

-take the polygonal lasso tool.
-make a very crude selection of the area to correct
-add a curve layer
- do nothing on the curve, just click okay
- set the opacity to 75%
- activate again the curve layer.
on the curve, you see the histogram (if you have CS3) of the place to correct, so it will be easy to drag the histogram the good way.
- lighten the dark part, what you want is two things:
* the dark eye looks good
* the edge of your crude selection has the same tone as the untouched part of the image
- when finish, click ok to validate the curve layer
at this time, you shoud have the right eye good, but a creepy transition with the rest of the face. The transition must still be okayish along the separation line delimited by your mask.
- delete your mask, replace it by a black one.
at this point, the image is back to start point.
- select the black mask,
- take a soft brush (B)
- select white foreground color
- select a low opacity (30%)
- gently paint on the eye where it is dark.
This will reveal the curve layer you have made in the previous step.

Now you are 95% done. the remaining problem is the color may be slightly off. most of the time, I can fix the slight color shift by duplicating the curve layer (ctrl J)
the original one is set to blend mode = luminosity.
the new one is set to blend mode = color
remember I requested to set the curve opacity to 75% before working on the curve. This was to give you an extra 25% to play with. You can use it to play on the color and on the luminosity, separately.

Its a great shot of a boy and his dog........really great shot of the boxer