How To Fix A Dog

Photographically speaking, that is.

One major problem with a small camera is that its flash is located too near to the axis of the lens. This causes the burst of light to bounce off the back of the eyeball, resulting in red-eye with humans and blue or green eye in certain animals.



This dog would look cute if it wasn’t for its crazy eyes. The poor critter looks like it’s demon-possessed, or has been radioactively mutated, ready to blast me with its death beams.



A quick fix with Photoshop fills in the green with black. Now the dog’s pupils look like two flat discs. Still creepy-looking. Also, the background is distracting.



So another fix. Eliminate the background. Darken the dog's left pupil but leave a catchlight, a gleam that helps it to appear more three-dimensional. Copy that manipulated pupil, rotate it 180 degrees, and pop it into place in the right eye. Better, but the pupils are really big. Still looks a bit freaky. But the white background is a lot better, so I’m making progress.



Pressing on, I keep the manipulated pupils but make them smaller. Then, I pick up some of the natural brown eye color and use it to fill in around the pupils. Now the eyes look more natural, at least a lot better than a couple of bright off-blue discs.

How much time did I spend on this? Well, since I’m teaching myself to use Photoshop through trial and error, the time spent can be measured in hours, not minutes.

In case you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been posting lately…