leopard cub

[Nancy Bell]

Mom stashed her cub on a sandstone ledge in a dry riverbed while she went hunting. The eagle eyes of our scouts found this youngster and here she is hiding behind some vegetation. From my recent wonderful trip to the Sabi Sands area near Kruger in South Africa.

I used a combination of layers of Topaz Impression and PS adjustments and tweaks.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Nancy, what a find!!! I love the way the bushes frame the youngster's face and the gorgeous color of the eyes which is repeated in some of the grasses. That must have been a thrill to see

[Mitch Carucci]

Wonderful! Haunting eyes. One of those perfect images. You must be really pleased with this one.

[Dennis Bishop]

Great shot, and I like the way your processing brings attention to the face.

Your posting this gave me a chance to try something I'd just read about to enhance eyes in portraits. I'm not recommending you modify the image this way, but I want to share the method and the result. (It's from the Photoshop CS-6 Missing Manual by Lesa Snider.) Put any ol' kind of adjustment layer above the image, turn its mask black, and change the blend mode to Screen. Then, use a white brush to reveal the irises (but not the dark outer ring) and the whites of the eyes. In this case, the irises are so small that even full opacity didn't change anything. However, the whites or yellow-greens in this case showed a substantial difference at 24% opacity.

Using an empty adjustment layer instead of a duplicate image layer gives a smaller increase in file size.

[gary ellwein]

This image alone makes the trip worthwhile. The eyes are remarkable. Dennis, thanks for the mini tutorial.

[Diane Miller]

Soooo cute!! I guess mom would object to any petting, but what a temptation!

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Love the eye contact, and the post by Dennis makes the eyes more prominent and engaging, IMO. If it were mine I might try lightening the vignetting a bit.