Last Leopard - need help

Using a imaging program that supports layers,make a duplicate layer and adjust for the cat. Then reduce iits opacity to say 55%. Select the eraser tool and use a soft edged brush to earase the background. Raise and lower the opacity to keep track. When it looks good raise the opacity of the cat to 100% and flatten. Sounds complicated but is easy and easy to get the hang of.
I'm jealous!

Art

Sounds like Art has the ticket with the PS suggestions. I would like to see what it looks like if you give it a try. Although flash can be problematic with mammals causing their hair coat to look wet, and their eyes to glow, this is a situation where a healthy blast of strobe might have helped. You could have underxposed the ambient by one stop to overall darken the vegetation, then used your strobe like at -1/3 to avoid frying the whites and try to get a balanced situation, or flash as main with underxposure of the background. Maybe others with more flash experience can comment further.. Wonderful cat, just a very tough lighting situation here.

I can't help with PS but it's a great leopard! The pose is wonderful. It looks like it's still pretty young.

I'd suggest a different tack than Art.

Assuming you have PS, I'd use the magic wand and other selection tools as necessary to select the cat (and possibly the dark areas of brush. Feather the selection, and then apply a Levels (or curves) adjustment layer and play with that to get the cat to stand out. (I'd also knock down the blue channel a bit in the same layer.) You can do the same thing, selecting the bright areas to tone them down a bit.

Contrary to what Art suggests, I wouldn't flatten. I always keep my layers intact--so I can go back and improve on them later. When I've made my final save, but before I create my web version I then flatten, resize for the web and then apply USM. But I don't save that (at least not back to the same file).

-Paul

Nice looking leopard. I would like to see how it looks with Art and Pauls changes.

Well, since Cheryl asked...

If you don't want this, say so, and a moderator or I can delete it.
I added four adjustment layers. Three are levels adjustment layers, each of which has a different layer mask. The fourth is a saturation adjustment with no mask.

-Paul

Thanks for the suggestions.

Paul, I like what you did. I am going to try to duplicate it (I'm not too good with masks yet). If I get stuck I'll pm you.

I appreciate the help.

One of the suggestions was for a flash but we didn't have one on this ride. It is also difficult to take the time to figure all the exposures out as things are happening so fast. Just need to get better, I guess.

Mike

Nice one Mike, love the pose. Paul has done a good job with the BG in the repost.

Beautiful cat. Paul's done really well with toning down the BG.

A beautiful cat and Paul's done a great job with that difficult lighting!

In a Levels adjustment, there are five sliders--three input and two output. More than 95% of the time, I only touch the input sliders. (And when possible, I only use the outer two. The inner one can help, but needs to be used carefully as it reduces contrast.) The output sliders tend to reduce contrast rather severely.

In this image, however, one of the output sliders is useful. I used it in one of the adjustment layers. I had selected only the brightest parts of the image using the magic wand tool. Then I feathered the selection (this always needs to be done after a selection with the magic wand tool prior to a levels adjustment, IMHO). Then I played with levels. I moved the input sliders a bit to try to darken the highlights, but they are so bright that the input sliders have little effect. This is where the output slider comes into play. By moving the rightmost output slider to the left, anything in the selection that was really bright is no longer so bright. This is how I toned down the highlights in my repost.

-Paul