Photoshop help

[ArtVandelay]

A friend's dog has passed away suddenly and I was looking through the photos I had of him to give to my friend. Unfortunately, the photos I do have are pretty useless, and I was hoping someone could improve the "best" one that I have of him. I'd like to get it printed onto canvas for my friends birthday for which I'll be away for, just want the photo to look its best before I look into getting it put onto canvas.

Can anyone on here make this photo look a little bit more professional or artistic. I'm useless with photoshop



Cheers in advance.

[ArtVandelay]

This is my effort. Just applied a filter, it's the limit of my skills on PS

[andy-xr]

OK, trying to be tactful here. Is that the only one you've got to work with?

[ArtVandelay]

andy-xr said:

OK, trying to be tactful here. Is that the only one you've got to work with?

Don't worry, I know it's a poor image, you won't hurt my feelings

It's not the only one but it is by far the best of a bad bunch. I only had the camera to get photos of his Xbox that he wanted to sell, I just got some of the dog out of boredom more than anything.

[bonsai]

[Simpo Two]

I don't think there's much you can do to make it 'better'.

If the dog was bounding happily through fields then a photo would make a nice souvenir; as it is IMHO the dog looks like he's about to top himself and it would make me even more depressed looking at it. I'd send him happier photos even if they're not as technically good.

[ArtVandelay]

Simpo Two said:

I don't think there's much you can do to make it 'better'.

If the dog was bounding happily through fields then a photo would make a nice souvenir; as it is IMHO the dog looks like he's about to top himself and it would make me even more depressed looking at it. I'd send him happier photos even if they're not as technically good.

I see your point, the dog was after food in that photo IIRC and all the ones I have were just from that day and are all in the house.

[Simpo Two]

If as I think that's a Weimaraner, how about some lateral thinking?

http://herbeysnews.co.uk/weimaraners-calendar-2010...

[Fastra]

To be honest sometimes a print onto some nice matt art paper works wonders sometimes - better than mucking about with filters in PS!

We have some A1 cartridge paper at work which I cut down to A3 and shove it through our Canon C1 Imagepress printer (basically a fancy photocopier really), for protraits and suchlike its quite a nice effect - the weave of the paper is pronounced enough to make a subtle difference.

If you can hang on till I'm back in on Monday I'll run a couple of tests out and post them out to you if you like.

[ArtVandelay]

Fastra said:

To be honest sometimes a print onto some nice matt art paper works wonders sometimes - better than mucking about with filters in PS!

We have some A1 cartridge paper at work which I cut down to A3 and shove it through our Canon C1 Imagepress printer (basically a fancy photocopier really), for protraits and suchlike its quite a nice effect - the weave of the paper is pronounced enough to make a subtle difference.

If you can hang on till I'm back in on Monday I'll run a couple of tests out and post them out to you if you like.

Thanks for the kind offer Fastra, I've been speaking to the friend's Mother and Sister tonight and they like the idea of a canvas print of my filtered effort (although I'll discuss it further with them when he's out of the house). The problem with the original image, in my eyes, is the clutter in the background and the idiot who photographed him making the image a bit soft. The filter removes both these problems and still captures the dog well, at least IMO.

I'll use fluid images as he seems to have a good rapport with everyone around here.