Effective Use of a Photoshop Filter for a Cat Selfie

We celebrate a cat cafe selfie with the effective use of a filter from Photoshop (PS). We don’t usually use PS filters as we have so much fun playing with Photo Lab on the iPhone but we got lucky with this picture. Here’s how.

Many pictures you see on blogs have been tweaked in some way. It may be a touch of brightness or a sharpening of focus but it happens more often than people will admit.

The lesson from this? Do not stress if your own images are less than perfect. Filters and other adjustments can help.

Never be afraid to use this valuable weapon in your armoury. It might be Affinity, Photoshop Elements, or another image editing program you are comfortable with.

Before and After the Filter Effect

Take a look at the before and after photographs, so you can how I ‘improved’ the shot of this serious looking young tabby, then embellished it with a subtle filter that changed its whole look.

The original picture included the edge of a white unit which distracts the eye from the central feature, a gorgeous tabby face.

I made a few adjustments to the photograph:

1. I cropped out the white unit and cropped the picture so there is a balance between the sweep of red (which is the back of a chair, not a trick) and the neutral background behind the cat.
2. I adjusted the light just a bit to brighten the cat face a little bit.
3. I used the Sharpen Mask in PS
4. I focused in on the left eye and brightened it a touch (a tip I learned here)
5. I then merged all the layers and applied the Plastic Film filter.

Do Filters Always Work?

Honestly? No, they don’t. Some are an absolute disaster, they put the F in F-ail. You can’t see what the subject of the image is, or it looks hideous. If a picture is really terrible, use the ‘undo‘ function and try a different filter.

On the upside, the more filters you try the better you get at judging what might work. You will also spend a lot of time laughing at your own disasters.

Do you have an epic selfie? One with a filter, or one that shows your superb cat in all it’s glory?