As you may have read in my post from last weekend, Jodie came to my mother's house and took over 700 pictures of Kadence, Kasino, and me.  Jodie has an amazing ability to see the personlity of a shot, but even the best photographer in the world does not expect to leave the shoot with 100% usable proofs, especially when it comes to weanling pictures!

What if the weanling picture you love doesn't turn out?

Do you have any options if the pose you love doesn't turn out for some reason (maybe it is too dark, out of focus, or lacks some other essential element)?  Of course with today's Photoshop gurus, many options are available that never used to be.  We all know it's easy to fix a blowing tail or a crooked band or a distracted ear.  But what if the ENTIRE picture is not right, but it is the ONLY ONE of that pose?

That is exactly what happened.  Weanlings move.  The wind was blowing.  The flash wasn't recycling as quickly as we like.  It was our first time with ME being IN the picture insead of TAKING the picture.  It was bound to happen.  I take shots all the time that don't turn out right.  I can't hold my friend to a higher standard than myself, can I? :-)

I love this particular shot.  Kasino was grazing on a loose lead.  I was petting him.  But then trouble starts.  For some reason, the extremely sensitive automatic focus found the trees behind us and focused there instead of on us.  Neither flash did appeared to go off at all.  Even with Photoshop's extremely useful Smart Sharpening tool, there would be no focusing this picture.

Other options for salvaging your weanling picture

So here's what I did instead.  I admit that this isn't an option that pleases me enough to print out and hang on my wall, but it makes the picture artistic and suitable for viewing and sharing on Facebook.  Inside of Photoshop's Filters Dropdown, there are dozens of options for customizing your weanling picture.  Each default filter can futher be optimized in an infinite number of ways.  There are also several places to download custom filters (often for free) online.  Try a Google search if you're interested.

For this particular picture, I used the Paint Daubs filter on the main picture.  I added a layer with a layer mask with the same filter applied again.  I used the layer mask to paint away Kasino and me.  I added an adjustment layer for levels (making the entire picture brighter).  I also just painted away the background.  The result was a weanling picture with a background with two paint daub filters applied (making it more blurry) and brighter subjects with one paint daub filter applied.  (Both photos on this page are copyright Jodie Strait).

So the next time you are thinking of deleting that not-quite-right-photo, see if you can find a way to salvage it first!

weanling pictures

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you comment below and then subscribe to my RSS feed!