Marjorie Dawson

How to Transform Your Pet Photos in One Quick Step Pet Parade 347

08/04/2020 by Marjorie Dawson 8 Comments

I wanted to focus on something quick and easy that every pet lover can enjoy doing today so get ready for a question, and a fun answer.

How many photographs have you taken and been really disappointed with the results? Maybe your cat is too far away, or your dog’s tail tip isn’t in the photo? You think, oh that is terrible. How on earth can you transform your pet photos!

Before you press the delete button I am going to ask you to hold off deleting your photo. There is one great way to rescue photos so you can include them in a blog post or share on social media with friends and family.

lose-Up Challenge for the Easter Pet Parade

Join Bionic Basil, and Barking from the Bayou and find out about the magic that will rescue your photo and give it a new life?

Cropping

Wait. What? That’s cheating isn’t it? It’s not the photo you took?

Yes, it is your photo, and cropping is one of the most popular post-production skills used by photographers of all levels.

Adjusting and editing photographs in a photo editor like Affinity Photo or Adobe Lightroom can help transform a good photo into a much better one.

Transform Your Pet Photos. Using good equipment allows you to take the best pictures of a tabby cat

Why crop a photograph anyway?

You can remove a lot of distracting detail around your pet.
It will help focus on a pet and product more closely for a sponsored blog post.
A close crop can add a real sense of drama to your photograph
You can tell your story better. Cropping down to a pet and the toy they love best says a lot more than a distant cat or dog, in a living room, with a toy thrown off to one side!

How do I crop a Photo?

Every photo editor has this basic photo editing tool of two intersecting corners with a diagonal line through them. These corners appear on an image when you activate the tool and you can adjust the corners to see how they behave.

You need to look at an image you are not satisfied with and ask yourself if cropping would improve it. If you are not sure, make a duplicate of your photo and play with that.

Transform Your Pet Photos. Connor Square Closup Photograph cropped of a handsome tabby — Wide shot of Connor the Tabby Cat from Neko Ngeru

Ask yourself how much of your photo you want to remove and experiment with different adjustments. Depending on your software you may also be able to crop to different shapes.

WordPress bloggers who are using Gutenberg have the option to display images with rounded corners using the Block Styles option.

Think beyond the rectangle, try a circular crop, or a neat square like this one. Use one of the online editors like Tuxpi to create something more unusual (see the bottom of this post).

Connor Square Closup Photograph cropped of a handsome tabby

Unless you are aiming for a dramatic close shot that fills the frame of your picture, try to give your subject room to ‘breathe’. The photo of Connor above, has light space around his head and the focus is on the cute face and bright eyes, so there is no cramped squashed feeling in the photo.

TIP: Try not to cut off a paw or tail tip when you crop. Ouch.`

Transform Your Pet Photos – Straightening

Have you ever taken a picture like this? You are trying to capture a quick passing moment and because you are rushed, it comes out crooked? Maybe there is a lot of space around your subject, or perhaps you are lucky, like I was in this picture, to capture the whole pet at all. It’s just not straight, is it?

Your photo application should be able to help. Check the menus or handbook for a straightening option.

You will find a grid or measure that allows you to align or level your photo, usually with a slider. Like my photographs here, you may just need to make a small adjustment, and it will make a difference to how people see your photo.

Action photograph of a Cat climbing vertical pole — © DashKitten.com

The Two Best Cropping Tricks

You probably don’t want to spend half your life cropping in a photo editor so let me pass on two of my favourite tips to help you get it right when you are taking your pet pictures.

Transform Your Pet Photos – Cultivate Composition Skills

Practising your composition skills is something you can work on every time you take a photo. Every picture is practice, and every shot a chance to improve and learn from your mistakes.

If we were all perfect photographers I believe the world would be a seriously boring place!

Don’t point and hope, try to frame your pet in a more interesting way. Did you know people like seeing pets slightly off centre in a photo. For some reason, our minds find the results more pleasing so try it with your own pictures.

The rule of thirds demonstrated by a cat photograph. — Salem and the ‘Rule of Thirds’ Grid

The Rule of Thirds is a basic composition technique that is intended to divide the frame into three equal horizontally and vertically segments using two pairs of equidistant straight lines.
Aperturebuzz

One of the best aids for taking pictures is the grid option. This grid overlays your viewer and divides it into smaller rectangles. It’s a great guide to boost your composition confidence.

The grid uses the ‘rule of thirds’ and you can use these guides to help position your pet when composing a photo. A pet eye or body placed along one of the lines or at an intersection of two lines will make a difference. Try using the grid and see what happens.

Shoot at a High Resolution

If you take photographs using a smartphone or a compact, check your resolution settings. Let me explain why this can matter.

If you shoot at a higher resolution then crop you will still get very good image quality. This will be good enough to make a canvas print or printable item from Red Bubble or Zazzle as well as sharing on social media.

TIP: Higher resolution pictures the up more room in your camera storage e.g. RAW images are very large. Check how much capacity your camera has.

What I Learned from Cropping

The lesson from all this? Don’t give up on your photos. Post-production can help you rescue a picture or make it look so much better!

Have you ever surprised yourself cropping a picture? Did you transform your pet photos?

Cog photograph using online image editor Tuxpi.com — Tigger using Tuxpi.com

Sources for Free Online Photo Editing

PicResize.com The Internet’s original picture resizing tool.
Lunapic free online editor
Tuxpi.com has cute and unusual shapes for your photos

Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets — Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
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Posterise Your Cat Selfie

05/04/2020 by Marjorie Dawson 10 Comments

I love using filters but, until now I have used filters in my smartphone, not within my photo editing software. I think it’s time I need to start exploring the filters in photo software on my computer. Now the question is where would you start?

It all looks complicated, even if you regularly crop, or dodge and burn photographs. Join us and the Kitties Blue for an adventure into a computer-generated cat selfie.

This is Thomas. He is a regular visit to the household and is welcomed by the cats almost as a member of the family!

Thanks to regular exposure to my DSLR Thomas is used to having his picture taken, and the sound of the shutter does not make him nervous.

Working With a Photograph

I chose Tom’s picture because it has simple shapes and I wanted to see how a single filter would change its look. You might want to try a simple shapes picture and a more complex one to see how the filter reacts.

I am using Affinity Photo and selected a filter called ‘Posterize’. When I selected the filter, a slider appeared on the screen that allowed me to adjust the effect of the filter. There may be other options in your filter so always explore and see what trouble you can get up to.

The first adjustment was quite small. It removed the colour and simplified the shapes of Tom and the background.

Black cat photograph with an Affinity Photo Software Filter

I moved the slider along a bit further and the results became more dramatic.

The effects are almost like a poster from the 1960’s with crude layers that could almost be a linocut. Tom’s eyes have become even brighter and the image definitely looks more dramatic.

Pushing the slider to its furthest extreme strips out a lot of shadows. It makes Tom look almost like a kitty alien.

His head is isolated and the background seems to be disintegrating around the strong central shape. All the focus is on the eyes and dark furred head now.

Using Affinity Lighting Filter For Fun Cat Photos

02/04/2020 by Marjorie Dawson 9 Comments

Regular readers will remember that I am a huge fan of filters. They are fun and can bring real drama to a photo, or make you laugh.

I want to introduce the Affinity Lighting filter. It is a digital light source that can add a sense of mystery to a photo and would be fantastic to spotlight a cat face, or a cat product for a blogger.

Harvey Full Face Portrait for Photography blog post

I want to share this on Brian’s hop as you may find something similar in your own photo editing software and want to experiment with it too.

If you are at home and need something to play with then exploring your own photo software is a great idea.

Thankful Thursday Graphic at Dash Kitten

I have used it on a cute portrait of our cat Harvey and a lamp I photographed recently. Different types of photo will stretch your skills in different ways so grab a handful of photographs and see how your approach changes with each one.

Affinity Lighting Control Panel

Although this might look scary, after you start playing around you will see what each button or slider does and be able to adjust your filter settings for creepy shadows or dramatic spotlights and everything in between.

If you check out this image, you can see that a new panel appears to allow you to make fine adjustments to your lighting. I recommend that you play around here and push every slider to extremes. You will learn what works and what doesn’t!

The Adjustment panel pops up on the right hand side.

There are three options:

Spot (the cone)
Point of Light
Directional Light

The most interesting I will show you here Spot aka the Cone of light.

The X on the image shows where the adjustment sliders for the Outer Cone and the Inner Cone are. These can be adjusted separately and you can move then outside the image if you need to.

The type of light can be changed but the most effective use of this filter is to adjust the spotlight in the cat or object you have chosen.

Affinity Photo Shot Harvey using Lighting Filter — Adjustment Cone located bottom right on Harvey’s photo

In the photograph of Harvey above, you can see how placement changes the lighting effect. I have stretched the outer cone beyond the photograph to get the effect I am after.

I recommend you keep adjusting the filter tool to get the effect you might have in your imagination.

Harvey using Affinity Photo Light Filter for a spotlight effect — Adjustment Cone located top left on Harvey’s photo

I changed the location of the light on Harvey’s portrait in this image so the light course in the filter is coming from a different location.

Harvey now looks different. He looks less ‘spooky’ in this photograph and I wish I had adjusted it to give more intense light, but he looks cute anyway.

A Finished Light Filter Portrait

Harvey Sample Usng Affinity Photo to spotlight effect — Final photo of Mysterious Harvey

Out of curiosity, I tried the filter on a photograph I have of a lamp from a restaurant. It is full of amazing and interesting textures so I could not resist experimenting on this photograph.

Using the Filter for a Lifestyle photo

A still life using Affinity Photo Lighting effect — Textured lamp photograph

I took the photograph close-up so I could get the reflection, like something presented in a lifestyle magazine. The lamp sat on a side counter, not on a stand, and this made capturing the reflection a lot easier.

I fired up the Affinity Lighting filter and began to play around.

You can see that the cone of light shines from where a natural light source might be. I then stretched the cone to extend the light further, and I chose to move it outside the photograph itself.

The reflection is highlighted on the right and the glow of the lamp mirrors it. This offers a different and interesting view that focuses on texture as much as showing that it’s a glowing lamp.

A still life using Affinity Photo Lighting effect 2 — A dramatic back lit effect using the Affinity Light filter

The final placement of the filter I tried was behind the lamp. This gives it an almost abstract feeling and every time I moved the adjustment cone the view changed. I admit that I could have played for hours but I had a blog post to write for Brian so I stopped with this one.

Affinity Light Filter Summary

I use one photo editing program. You may have:

Photoshop Elements,
GIMP,
Corel Paintshop Pro or,
Phase One – Capture One Pro.

Each gives you similar types of filter options that focus your light onto a cat or an object.

Experiment, have fun and don’t be afraid to really push the boundaries with your adjustments. It will show you amazing effects and total disasters, all filled with drama.

Which effect did you like best using the filter? Harvey has his favourite, of course. What about you?

The First Photo Post Roundup of 2020 Pet Parade 346

01/04/2020 by Marjorie Dawson 5 Comments

I am including the best of January and February to start 2020 in my post review. Summer is drawing to a close in New Zealand although I am still getting gorgeous sunshine and can enjoy time in the garden with the cats.

Why a post review? Because it is so easy to miss a post on your favourite blogs even if you get an email notification, or drop by on a hop so, I hope you find something here you will enjoy catching up with.

Start 2020 learning something new with Bionic Basil and Bentley and Pierre on the Bayou on Pet Parade 346.

Dodge and Burn Your Pets

Do what? That sounds really scary!

Stick with this, it’s actually a real eye-opener. Discovering these tools has transformed the final result of lots of my photographs. It was an unfamiliar tool in my Affinity Photo app for a long time until I started reading up about it.

Check what I found out, it might surprise you.

Photographs for Sale on RedBubble

I feel confident about my photography to start adding pictures to a small starter store in visual site Red Bubble. I am using it as an income stream and also as a fundraiser for cat charity work.

It is an experiment you might like to read about.

The RedBubble Header for Dash Kitten Photography items. Similar to Zazzle it was founded in Australia

A Lucky Shot

Dot Kitten (sisfur to Dash) has the model for some tabby cat photographs and I was lucky to get one shot that may make you laugh out loud!

Dot is a natural model and her fur has so many wonderful colours I never tire of taking her photograph. She has been a bit unwell recently but has medicine and is due a check-up at the vets soon.

Photograph of a cat laid down yawning caught by a DSLR camera

So, You Have a new 50mm Lens?

I got a new lens for Christmas and I wanted to share how useful it is and how a new lens changes your camera viewpoint and how you look at your pictures. No, it wasn’t expensive, yes I think you will love it.

Find out how you have to ‘think different’ with this lens in my post.

Comparative size camera lenses to show how compact a 50mm lens is

I hope you have found a new post to discover and enjoy. If you have any questions arising from the posts, let me know in the comments.