I did an earlier post about how never to delete an image until you’ve had a chance to play with it. This is another example of that. I was at the beach and sat watching this little black dog who was intently looking out into the ocean. Sometimes he paced the shoreline but mostly he sat and stared. I couldn’t get his attention. He was on a mission.

BEFORE_WEB_black-dog

Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought my camera with me.  I just had my iPhone and snapped the picture because he was just too precious to let get away. I wasn’t happy with the iPhone photo but was hoping I might be able to do something with it.

Later, I uploaded the image to my computer and started playing with it in Photoshop. I first cropped it down, because I wanted more open space to the right of the dog, since he was staring so intently in that direction. Then I started playing in Radlab, and added several recipes which really did the magic. If you haven’t tried Radlab, you are missing a fantastic tool! I wanted to lighten up the whole shot, but still make the dog profile a striking black, and I was able to do this with Radlab, mixing 8 different stylets into one recipe (because I used so many stylets, I saved the recipe so I can use it again).

I was pretty happy with this, but didn’t really like the sky. It was okay, but since the dog was looking in that direction, I wanted there to be something in the sky over on the right. So I jumped to a handy-dandy texture on Flickr by Lenabem. The one I chose had a sun in the upper right corner. I chose Multiply blend mode at 45% opacity and was happy with how it looked.

Here’s the final result.

WEB_day12_black-dogSo I guess the lesson once again is don’t be too quick to delete an image until you’ve played with it first. I really love how this picture turned out and am awfully glad I kept the original!