How to Edit Your Pet Art Photos to Enhance Detail and Vibrancy

We know that keeping your pup still or your kitty quiet isn’t always easy, but if you want to create the perfect portrait of your pet using Portrait My Pet, a clear, quality photograph of your best friend is essential.

Submitting a high-resolution picture will help you achieve the best results, ensuring that you can display your precious pet’s portrait with pride!

Read on as we share how to edit your pet art photos to optimize their detail, clarity and vibrancy.

Choose a Versatile Photo Editing Suite

With so many photo editing suites and tools available online, it’s never been easier to edit your shots in minutes.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom are popular choices, but there are many others to explore as well. Some of these editing suites are also free to use, providing you with excellent results without a hefty price tag.

Platforms like Canva, Pixlr, and Photoscape X offer a wealth of user-friendly tools for digital image editing. You can use them to crop your shots, adjust their white and black balance, enhance the colors and sharpness, and add special effects as you see fit.

Tools like Luminar AI, Fotor, and MyEdit also have integrated AI features, so you can add professional-looking AI effects and instantly remove unwanted objects from your images.

Your smartphone probably also has built-in editing tools, so don’t forget about these if you want a quick and easy solution.

Crop Your Image

Sometimes, the perfect shot has a stray sock in the corner or the edge of a well-chewed, much-loved but seen better days toy. 

Cropping settings in photo editing tools allow you to cut away any parts of the shot you want to remove, leaving you with a clearer subject and fewer background distractions. This also helps to keep the focus entirely on your cherished pet.

Once you’ve cropped your image, it becomes easier to enhance its vibrancy and detail, as you can work directly with your pet’s image instead of having to factor in and edit other elements.

If your image is slightly skewed to the left or the right, use a rotation feature to rotate your photo until your pet is straight and aligned in its center before cropping.

Adjust Your Image’s White and Color Balance

Once you’ve imported your pet’s photo into your editing suite, your first step should be to optimize its balance.

Many editing pros recommend using a warm white balance for pet images because it produces a more welcoming and memorable ambiance.

Some editing suites allow you to choose from pre-set white balances, which is ideal for beginners. If you’re already skilled at image editing, you can create your own custom white and color balance with your platform’s tint and temperature sliders, or use a pre-set to bring out specific tones in your shots.

Adjust Your Shadows and Highlights

Changing the shadow depth and highlights in your images can instantly transform them into striking photos of precious moments. If your images are overexposed and excessively bright, use the highlights adjuster to tone down the brightness and regain some of the details in your shot.

If the darker portions of your image need more contrast, use the shadows or black slider tool to deepen them.

Once you find the ideal contrast range, your furry companion will instantly stand out, making for a great pet portrait that looks as lifelike as possible.

Optimize Saturation Levels

The saturation of the colors in your pet photos can vary widely, and bright sunlight and glare can wash out tones and leave them looking lackluster. Luckily, it’s easy to adjust the saturation in your images when using a flexible photo editing tool.

Most platforms offer saturation sliders that allow you to quickly enhance the saturation levels in your images and give their colors as much vibrancy as you prefer.

Adjusting your picture’s saturation will make shadows deeper, warm tones richer, and cool tones more crisp and clear. This setting is fantastic for bringing out the hues of your pet’s eyes and fur, and if you're dressing them up, it can increase the impact of the outfit and its colors. All of this translates into beautiful pet portraits from Portrait My Pet.

Enhance Your Pet’s Fur Texture

Every cat and dog has their own unique fur textures, colors and tones. Highlighting these elements can quickly enhance your image, while helping to draw attention to some of your pet’s signature features.

As a beginner, you can use tools like sharpness and structure sliders to enhance the textures of your beloved companion’s fur. These tools can also help to bring out the beauty of their eyes, which is ideal for creating perfect portraits.

If you’d like to use more advanced editing techniques, use tools like your suite’s adjustment brushes to highlight brighter areas of your pet’s coat, and clarity sliders to add more texture in specific areas.

These strategies can help to set your pet apart from their backgrounds in your images, and produce professional-looking results without you having to hire an editor!

Remove Unwanted Elements

Images without leashes, collars, passers-by, intruding plants, and blurry elements will place the full focus on your companion, giving you the chance to showcase them in as much detail as you can.

If you’re already putting together an online portrait portfolio showcasing your pet (or people!), you likely know how to remove unwanted or distracting visual elements from your photos, so go right ahead. On the other hand, if you’re new to photo editing, there are simpler ways to ensure your pet is front-and-center in your shot.

AI tools like Luminar AI and MyEdit use artificial intelligence to automatically detect and remove distractions in your shots. Once these elements are gone, your photos will have your pet as their primary subject.

Edit Your Pet Photos for Beautiful Results

Editing your shots of your pets before you submit them to us is the best way to ensure your portrait truly captures your pet’s distinct essence.

Adjust the color balance, saturation, clarity and highlights of your photos and use the right tool to remove distractions, and we can use the resulting image to produce a perfect pet portrait that you’ll treasure for years to come.

Meta Title: How to Enhance Detail & Vibrancy In Pet Photos| Portrait My Pet

Description: Editing your pet photos to enhance their detail will produce the perfect Portrait My Pet portrait. Follow this guide to edit your shots like a pro.