Welcome to Episode 3 of the Edit My Photo Challenge!

In my Learn Pet Photography Facebook group, we run monthly editing challenges. How it works is:

• I provide one of my RAW images for group members to download and edit
• They post their final edits of my photo
• From all the submissions, I choose a “winner”
• The winner then submits one of their images for me to edit!

I love these challenges (and so do my students!) because it’s so interesting to see how different people’s individual styles and editing techniques can completely transform an image in so many different ways.

For me - editing the winner’s image gives me the opportunity to demonstrate new pet photography editing techniques!

If you’d like to join us in the private Facebook group for Learn Pet Photography so you can participate in these challenges, you just need to be a member of the Learn Pet Photography website by purchasing a course, or enrolling in some free training.

Theresa was the winner of a recent Edit My Photo challenge and the image she submitted to me to edit had great exposure, sharpness, focus, a great location, a gorgeous pup - BUT lots of distractions! From the collar and leash to the sharp foliage in the same plane of focus as the dog's face - there was quite a lot to deal with and remove to simplify the image.

In the edit, I used the full power of Photoshop's updated Content-Aware features to completely remove these distractions, with a minimum of effort and amazing results.

Join me and watch the edit from start to finish, or fast-track using the chapter links below.

Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:45 - Editing challenge winner
1:10 - Winner's image to edit
2:32 - White balance check
3:58 - Lightroom adjustments
4:18 - Check for blown-out highlights
5:29 - Recovering details from the shadow
5:55 - Before and after
6:25 - A few more Lightroom adjustments
7:24 - Before and after
7:55 - Distractions to deal with in Photoshop
8:40 - Old technique using the Patch tool
9:31 - Various selection tools
10:23 - Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool
11:10 - Making the selection
13:31 - Content-Aware on steroids! 💥
19:30 - Fixing up some areas after the content-aware changes
20:12 - Leash/collar removal
20:58 - Refining the fur edge
22:10 - Tidying up speed edit
23:01 - Removing another major distraction using Content-Aware
24:54 - Lightroom Edit vs latest Photoshop edit
25:07 - Fine-tuning speed edit
26:21 - How far is too far when removing distractions?
27:12 - Back to Lightroom (before and after)
27:33 - When do you do extensive editing to an image? 🤔
28:04 - Cropping in Lightroom
28:49 - Darkening off the foreground
29:22 - Adding a custom vignette
31:03 - Final evaluation
31:58 - Outro
32:13 - Before and afters