It seems the hardest part for me is to figure out what I want my subject matter should be. After digging through the pictures on my computer I came across a few of the most amazing cat I ever had the privilege of adopting. He joined us as a stray, and after calling to us through open windows, we decided to name him Romeo. He was always so laid back and mellow, and while not the most affectionate cat, he loved people and didn’t like to be alone. I knew I wanted to do something using a picture of him. I liked the idea of a beer label and chose to do that.

I started with the original picture and used the wand tool to select Romeo from the image and then refined the selection. I then made a new layer with the selection and added a radial transparent to black gradient. I added a surface blur from the filter menu and then the texture filter “grain” with a speckle type so I could keep some detail but also simplify the image. I immediately duplicated the layer twice. On the first duplicate I changed the mode to screen and lowered the opacity to 50%. I then desaturated the second duplicate, changed its mode to subtract and also created a mask for all the layers to help clean up the edges of the fur. Next I made a new layer and added to the radial transparent to black gradient. Then I selected just the eyes from the original background and made a new layer and moved it to the top on the layers list. I created a mask to make sure it would only be the eyes and not the fur around them.  I then opened the camera raw filter and increased the clarity, saturation and adjusted the tone and temperature. Now the eyes popped and also didn’t have all the filters and desaturation of the other layers. Now I could make a background layer and use the color from the eyes with the eye dropper to fill it in. After that I just had to move it down in the layers list. At this point I was really digging the overall look I created and decided to add text. I chose a stencil font and used the layer effects style to create a radial gradient for the font after a filled it in with the background color. This helps it show up lighter on the cat design and darker on the background color. I decided I needed a good texture for it to go along with the texture of the cat fur so I added a burlap texture filter.