Photo-Retouching - rious techniques used to enhance the quality of a photograph

• Photo-Retouching
  Various techniques used to enhance the quality of a photograph
• For some, retouching a photo can be tedious, painstaking and detailed type of work. I actually enjoy and find it a peaceful challenge to take someone else's snapshot photo and transform it into a more pleasing photograph. There are many layered steps and the results can be quite subtle to the untrained eye. These changes may not be so obvious at first, but I will try to highlight what was done.
  
  First, these were all done in Photoshop (CS5) and some techniques involved: cropping, color balancing, adjustments, layers/masks, paths, filters.

  So you can see the difference, I've tried to show on the Left side: Original photo/Before, and on the Right side: After Retouching

  I hope you will also agree the changes are for the better.  These photos were done as preparation for use in the client's website.  She owns a dog grooming business.  The goal was to be able to focus on the dogs and her grooming skills.
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  On the Left, we see the Pomeranian seems to disappear into the background.  Everything seems grey.  The Right shows cropping, and some masking with a blur in the background, contrast and exposure boost, in order to really focus in on the dog and distinguish it from the background.  I also removed the white flash in pupils.
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  Here we see the Left image has some distracting background, like foilage growing out of the sheepdog's head.  The Right version through layers, masking, filters (blur), clone stamp, has removed some of this.  We can now focus on the clean cut and shape of the Sheepdog's groom.
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  Cropping, masking with blur filter, adjustments for brightness and contrast to help make the white poodle stand out more from background.
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  In addition, I've also created "Before/After" photos to place on the client's website.  These also required some enhancements, including cropping, adjustments, color balancing.  Hope you agree these helps to show the groomer's talents.
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