November 11, 2001 – It seems fitting to present a veteran Dane on Veteran's Day, or maybe that's just an excuse to feature this lovely older Dane. I don't know who she belongs to. (If anyone can identify her, please send me a message.) I took her snapshot at the GDCA National Specialty last month. She was resting on a blanket during the last hours of the Best of Breed judging. I was struck by her regal bearing.

Here is the original photo (left) that I worked from. It was taken with a Nikon 990 digital camera. I didn't use a flash so the resulting photo is a bit grainy and it's definitely too murky. In order to transform the snapshot into a portrait, I fired up Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and got to work. I carefully erased the background and adjusted the overall contrast and colors. The eyes lacked definition so I painted in details around the lids and then I put "the glimmer" back in her eyes. Her right ear was not as upright as her left ear, so I adjusted the angle. (In retrospect, not quite enough.) Her collar distracted from her sculptural form so I got rid of it. Once I was satisfied with the retouching, I began searching for a nice background that would compliment the study. I own a huge photo CD collection of licensed stock photos (about 60,000 in all) so it was just a matter of trial and error until I found something that captured the feeling I was after. The sky was too white so I added a blue tint. I also darkened the area immediately behind the dog in order make her stand out better. Voila! Mission accomplished. I hope you've enjoyed the explanation.