Luke W

BTW - Krislin About the best you could hope for is a longer zoom! The only other thing I thought of would be to increase the exposure compensation by at least 1 stop to being out some detail in the dark feathers.

That is so cool Mike - great to watch. I hope one day my dog is as impressive! Thanks for the video.

Impressive!!

Congrats all - esp JulesP and Poppy who I got to meet today!

It sounds like the lens you were using will only go down to f/4. The only option... Buy a faster lens What lens were you using?

Thanks Nekhbet. I need to generalise my 'leave it' command a bit. At the moment (my cue is 'off' by the way), I only use it for a food refusal self contgrol type exercise. To satisfy my curiosity...exactly what does the 'leave it' (or 'pusti') command mean to the dog? I kind of know what it means to us (stop doing the thing I want you to stop doing :p )...but exactly what's the criteria the dog should be using? Stop sniffing? Don't eat it? Stop moving in that direction?

Did/do you correct the Malinois every time it's nose drops to the ground (ie. My pulling up on the lead to keep it's head up?) ? signed spaniel owner

I don't walk my dog on lead that much. 200m to the park, from the car to the beach, etc. When I started to type what's expected of him when he's on lead, I realised I need to tighten my criteria to make it clear for him. I'm a bit inconsistant. I intend to make sure he's by my side - sort of a relaxed heel position. He doesn't need to be looking at me and he doesn't need to be right against my leg.

Hi Ripley I played a little with this one too. This is a pretty advanced technique but very handy... CTL-SHFT-ALT-~ to create a luminosity selection. This selects the pixels in the image darker than 50%. Then invert the selection - CTL-SHFT-I. Now you've got all pixels brighter than 50% selected. Now create a curves adjustment layer. The mask will be based on the selection. Click on the mask and then Image-Adjustment-Curves. Use the curves to make the grey in the mask white and the darker areas black. Now you've got curves adjustment layer that targets the sky. You can also use the same mask (CTL click on the mask) to create a HueSat adjustment layer in colorise mode, again, just targeting the sky. In the screenshot below, I used an extra gradient (black to transparent) on the HueSat layer to punch some blue into the lower part of the sky. Here's a screenshot. Just to show you the basic structure of the adjustment layers and masks. Note: The JPG artififacts could have been avoided if I was working on the original image. They could be tidied up in any case.

Are you really using the pen tool? Shortcut is P. Note the pen is good for longer hard lines, straight lines, nice curves, sharp angles etc. Work in full screen mode so you can move the image around with the hand tool. If, while using the pen tool, you need to move the image around to access areas currently off-screen, simply hit the space-bar and the cursor will turn into a hand. You can then use the hand to move the image around. The let go of the space bar and the pen continues where you left off. The pen tool is the hardest tool to use in photoshop. Here's a tutorial: http://www.thegoldenmean.com/technique/pen1.html

For others who might be interested: I traced around the dog using the pen tool. This creates a path. Then I turned the path into a selection, then inverted the selection. The means that everything EXCEPT the dog was selected. I then used the stamp tool to copy grass over the top of the handler and rope. Because the dog was NOT selected the stamp tool avoided the dog. Small contrast changes using curves adjustment layers. The hardest part is learning to use the pen tool. I didn't spend a lot of time on this one - the tracing could have been more carefully done.

Barkly - 7mo - passed level 1 at Croydon today! He did great! And we had fun!

That one is easy enough to remove the handler and the orange rope in the background. If nobody beats me to it - I'll have a go tomorrow.

It's going to depend on exactly how you want the background to look. If you simply want to add some brightness and color, playing with selective color, color replacement, saturation and curves would be the way to go. If you really want to start with a fresh sky, there's no alernative but slow, painstaking masking at 100% or greater.

I don't do nearly as much photograqphy as I used to, this thread is the perfect excuse to go looking over my old stuff!

This is one I happened to be showing someone the other day - so I had before and after handy: - Retouching involved creating a path around the bottle, chain and medalion to isolate the background. - Blackening the background. - Curves adjustments to the bottle to increase contrast (with masks to fine tune the targetting of the effect). - Curves adjustments to the chain and medallion (with masks to fine tune the targetting of the effect). - Mirroring the subject to create the artificial reflection. - Dust removal - Targetting sharpening - Resize - Convert to sRGB - Output sharpening After Before

Why do you suspect a yeast infection? He doesn't seem to be smelly. I smelled in his ears - they smell a little bit doggy I suppose, but I really have to stick my nose in them to smell them They seem very clean to look at. I clean them once a week with warm water, ACV, a paper towel and my pinky finger. They are invariably very clean. I have no idea what a yeast infection smells like. He has had smelly lip folds in the past, which I cured by cleaning with apple cider vinegar. I add ACV to his water regularly now. He's not itching constantly, and I can't see any redness. I haven't seen him rub his eyes at all today. He seems to scratch for maybe 10-20 seconds, once every hour or two (not that I'm keeping a diary or anything).

That's want I want to avoid.

Um no he wont. They are a hell of a lot better then long term cortisone usage. I bet when you get to your vets today they will deal you out some cortisone, some antihistamines, may even give you dog a shot of cortisone, and try to get you to change your dog over onto a specific dry food that they sell to do an elimination diet. I'm not going to make it to the vet today. I'm not going to go the cortisone route. My wife has been on prednisolone for 10 years - I'm aware of the downsides! He's not too bad at the moment so I'll see how he is the next day or so - he seems better than he was last night. And I've just bought 2 big bags of Eagle Pack The other thing I've considered is it might be peanut butter related. He's been getting a little bit more than usual. Still less than a teaspoon a day though.

I haven't really changed his diet. He's on Eagle Pack Holistic Medium Puppy (which does have some grains). I'm worried about using an anti-histamine - he won't develop a tolerence to them?

How's your hand holding technique? Are you holding the camera and lens properly? Some good tips here: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&h...que&spell=1 Still getting camera shake at 1/500? What about 1/750? At 1/1000? Just because it seems to shake through the viewfinder - at fast shutter speeds it won't necessarily affect the shot. IS is still the bees knees though (for non moving objects).

No gunky eyes yet - just what seems to be itchiness. Someone told me if the gunk is green they need to be on anitbiotics. I'm keeping an eye out.

Hi All About 2-3 weeks ago (I think) Barkly started sneezing – not a lot maybe 5 times per day. Over the last couple of days he’s started scratching more frequently (all over) and also rubbing his eyes with his paws... I’m going to take him to the vet today – but I thought I’d ask if anyone had any ideas? My first thought is that it’s spring and that it’s some kind of allergy to pollen, grass seeds or something. Do your dogs get a bit itchy, or rub their eyes or get sneezy around this time of year? Any particular plants he might be having a problem with? Any other ideas? Suggestions to help him? We are in Melbourne.

PS - What shutter speed? A 200mm with a 1.4X, I'd be shooting at 1/500 minimum (without IS). I drink too much coffee.

The 33% is just the view size on the screen. Crop it how you want it, then save it as a JPG - that'll be a 100% crop.