Breyer Horse Photography - Playing with Editing

One of my favorite things to do when I am editing my Breyer photos is to play with the colors. While clarity is key, I find that color is the second most important thing that I look for in my photos. The more color I can get the better. Below are some pictures of a before and after editing. Note how much more beautiful they are when they are more vibrant.

Latigo Dun It is my new Breyer and I love him! His dappling is so beautiful, especially with his silver-colored mane and tail. He is soooo photogenic with his stunning coloring!

While the two pictures above aren't exactly the same, they are the same horse taken at the same time of day with the same camera and with almost the same angle. As you can tell, the bottom one is much more edited. He can still use a little work as the light around the face is a little too much and is washing it out and reducing the clarity. The image could use a little straightening and cropping, but you can tell how editing can affect the quality of the picture. 

The next horse is an unfinished custom by me, so his eyes are very lackluster. 

 

Once again, with the help of editing, the picture was greatly improved. While the appaloosa spots on his back, which are much darker in reality, were little washed out, the picture remained good overall. Even his matte eyes have a little personality to them!

Here is another example of editing. Now, this horse is a CollectA and only a few inches tall, so I took his picture inside. This affects the lighting and can change things a lot because the inside light tends to really wash out the picture. because of this, I tend to increase the color A LOT.

Obviously, I need to work on the footing a little. I also need to bring down the whites and highlights in the second picture. But you can really see how bringing out the color really added interest to the picture. I will add one more example of editing and then I will be done.

Now, this picture is really bad and I don't really care for it. It did not turn out how I wanted it to at all. These are also both customs by me, some of my first so both of them are going to be redone.
Once again these are outside pictures. This time the lighting is really different because everything is white. The sky is white, the snow is white, this makes the lighting white. My horse is a blanket appaloosa. This made it a little more difficult to add depth to the picture, and I am still not sure how well I accomplished it. But editing did improve it a little bit.

Well, I hope someone found help from this, or an inspiration, or something! Maybe even just that moment of amusement, "This person, obviously, don't know nothin'!"
And finally (yes I know I said these were the last ones) editing crazy!