Figured I'd kick off my glorious return to DPC with a classic subject, my crabby old cat, Sorcha. The challenge is Gray, she's a gray cat, how could I not?
RAW adjustments in Photoshop
Base layer:
crop
unsharp mask
shadow/highlight
hue/sat to partially desat red (toned down a little bit of a pink lip)
slight curves adjustments
cloned out some eye goop
duplicate layer
Duplicate layer:
gaussian blur 20%
overlay mode
flatten image
resize
smart sharpen
Sharpen tool on eyes and nose
Vignette layer:
box tool, feather 50px, select inverse
paint bucket black
Layer fill 20%
flatten & save
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Post-challenge:
Not sure how to react to being told that my gray cat is orange and white ;-)
Seriously, though, my goal was to fill the frame with gray and present a soft, dreamy image with no whites or blacks. Sorcha's nose is naturally gray, and I waited for her to close her eyes to make it happen. I think the shot probably suffered a bit from the perception that it might be a desat. There was some, but it was minimal - a little bit of pink kitty lip was visible, and I found it distracting, so I pulled back the reds a bit. You can really see that it's not a desat up against the thumbs of those that are, but on its own? I can see where that would be confusing.
But Don liked it, and that makes it all worthwhile!
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I was going to comment on this before I saw posthumous' comment and ribbon! It is a full meal any way you look at it. A delight for viewer and someone searching for photographic Thereness. - I found the concept of the challenge confusing so I neither entered nor voted, but my feeling was that black and white were to be avoided, and that the colours be sort of penumbral or simply non-vibrant. I think many variations of saturation in this would have been fine, and interesting, but this definitely works as Dreaming of Tuna.
This is a beautiful shot, crisp where it should be and soft to add depth and background. I don't see it as very 'grey' though, colors seem more brownish, orangy, white to me.
This is separated from those everyday mundane pictures of family animals by a long way. Lovely picture, lovely grey shades. I find those little hairs down the bottom that drifted into the DOF a little strange, but no biggy!
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