Challenge/Advice on a black dog amongst Bluebells

[mikemeister_admin]

Hi,

My wife would like me to print this picture, so I thought it needed a bit of improvement.

As far as I can see, the dog needs lightening and steepening the L curve.  I have been trying this in two ways...
a) by masking the dog and apply corrections to it and then blending that layer either normally or in Screen mode.
b) by selecting shadows/dog and then by applying a layer in Screen mode to lighten it - instead of using L curves.

I have also increased the saturation of the image.

What do you think is the right way to go about these improvements?  Could you tell me what you would do (with curves values if possible) please.

I enclose the original picture, just the dog masked (if that helps) and my best attempts so far by the two methods.

Thanks
Chris

[derekfountain]

As far as I can see, the dog needs lightening and steepening the L curve.

I think you're going to struggle here Chris. There's virtually no information in that's dog's coat - it's almost pure black. Running the Shadows and Highlights filter on it shows posterisation starting at 5% shadows. In other words, just a very slight bump in the lightness of the dark blacks in the coat makes it go blocky.

I don't think you'll do better than you already have, but I'd be pleased to be proved wrong. :)

[BBushe]

do you have a .raw file of the photo? perhaps an lighter exposure to get some detail in the coat, then an exposure merge?

[mikemeister_admin]

no - this is the only image and I've done the best I can now
Thanks for the thought
Chris