#18 Feeling very out of my depth

divamum

This is where "self-taught" starts to fall apart! I understand the *concepts* of high and low key in a general kind of way, but I have a sneaking suspicion there's more to it than "mostly highlight" or "mostly shadow" (and thanks pyro for that link you posted -was a very helpful starting point).

So, first question - anybody have any links to discussion/tutorials/articles about the hard-core technique behind it? I'm gonna guess there's a whole lot of number theory I should be understanding here, and I've yet to find anything beyond examples; something tell's more there's more to it than that.....

In the meantime, here's a "seat of the pants" idea I've been playing with. I was fooling around taking some black-against-black self-portraits on Monday when I found a scrap of gold lace and was reminded of the Steichen/Gloria Swanson portraits and I thought it might be a viable entry once i tinkered with it (this has had fairly scary amount of pp at the moment, although there's always room for more!)

Anyway, have at it. I'm SO out of my depth it's not even funny.



There's also this self-portrait, but I think my brightly-lit fair skin makes it too bright to be considered low key?



C&C - PLEASE!!!

richtersl

For an initial attempt, these are fabulous!

I don't know what to make of the Gloria Swanson-like shot. Right now there's a big area of white under the one eye. If that had one of those embroidered flowers in that area it will stand out a bit less. Or, can you drape that veil over your face so that we can see some of the draping?

The second one is terrific! I think it's very nice as is. Have you tried toning down the highlights on your face as you mentioned? If you like, you might also consider playing with some "eye pop" on your eyes: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=551819&postcount=24. You will have to play with the opacity slider a bit to keep you from looking like an alien, though.

Being a musician, I thought you were going to try something different with high key / low key.

pyroPrints.com

divamum wrote:

There's also this self-portrait, but I think my brightly-lit fair skin makes it too bright to be considered low key?

I'm no expert, but that fits my definition of lowkey perfectly.

Flyinggina

I will let those who know comment on whether one or both of these qualify for low key. Seems to me that they both have potential and that #2 is probably closer than #1. And it is an adorable self portrait. It makes me smile just to look at it.

That said, I love the concept of #1. Linda mentioned the brightness of the right side of the face (camera left) and my eye was drawn first to the dark splotch to the left of the nose (camera right). These are, I think, two sides of the same coin. I suspect that the answer is a smoother gradation from light to dark and an avoidance of any really bright spots (except for catch lights in the eyes). Also, playing with placement of the netting should help a lot.

Just thinking out loud, if you want to pursue the #1 idea (and I'd love to see what you come up with), you might want to include more of the face in the frame then wrap it in a very soft light from camera left - just enough to add some sparkle to the eye camera right before that side of the face fades gently into mysterious darkness. I think a little more detail (light) in the hair to camera left would help.

Waiting eagerly for the next installment!

Virginia

divamum

Being a musician, I thought you were going to try something different with high key / low key.

HA! I didn't even think of that - got so bogged down in dark, dark, dark or light, light, light (to the point I got The Child dressed up in white vest, white sweater and white fleece hat and tried to get some shots in the snow yesterday, but alas my long lens is not good at capturing fast action.. and sleds move FAST!!! )

richtersl wrote:

For an initial attempt, these are fabulous!

I don't know what to make of the Gloria Swanson-like shot. Right now there's a big area of white under the one eye. If that had one of those embroidered flowers in that area it will stand out a bit less. Or, can you drape that veil over your face so that we can see some of the draping?

You know what's really funny about this is that most of the PP I did was to clone out the draping lol. I'll go back to the original shot and see what I can do. Also, that white patch is due to some glow I added (I'm telling you, this has had just about everything my burgeoning PS knowledge can throw at it!)

The second one is terrific! I think it's very nice as is. Have you tried toning down the highlights on your face as you mentioned? If you like, you might also consider playing with some "eye pop" on your eyes: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=551819&postcount=24. You will have to play with the opacity slider a bit to keep you from looking like an alien, though.

Ooo.... is your monitor calibrated? Just curious, because I have in fact played with the eyes to bump them up, so not sure if it's my monitor or yours....

I can easily tone down the highlights somewhat. Will play around with all of this.

Tx, as always!

divamum

pyroPrints.com wrote:

I'm no expert, but that fits my definition of lowkey perfectly.

Thanks Pyro - appreciate the comment! What I want to know is the *numbers* (ie highlights shouldn't exceed XXX or whatever). I'm useless with a histogram at the moment - trying to learn, but I KNOW that I'm just guessing still. Gotta get this stuff learned properly....

divamum

Flyinggina wrote:

I will let those who know comment on whether one or both of these qualify for low key. Seems to me that they both have potential and that #2 is probably closer than #1. And it is an adorable self portrait. It makes me smile just to look at it.

That said, I love the concept of #1. Linda mentioned the brightness of the right side of the face (camera left) and my eye was drawn first to the dark splotch to the left of the nose (camera right). These are, I think, two sides of the same coin. I suspect that the answer is a smoother gradation from light to dark and an avoidance of any really bright spots (except for catch lights in the eyes). Also, playing with placement of the netting should help a lot.

Just thinking out loud, if you want to pursue the #1 idea (and I'd love to see what you come up with), you might want to include more of the face in the frame then wrap it in a very soft light from camera left - just enough to add some sparkle to the eye camera right before that side of the face fades gently into mysterious darkness. I think a little more detail (light) in the hair to camera left would help.

Waiting eagerly for the next installment!

Virginia

Tx Virginia... and for the props about my silly hat shot! I had fun with it (and I think I'm finally getting the hang of Kelby's skin touching techniques - that one is getting closer to looking "polished" but not entirely plastic). I may just go and reshoot the veil anyway, it's just a slow one: shooting it is actually pretty easy; the time-consuming part was doing the makeup since there is a TON of it on. As an aside, I can't believe how much the camera soaks up dark-coloured makeup - what I have on in those shots I would have considered appropriate as a strong makeup in a 3,000 seat theater, so you can imagine how much there was!!!

Even though I thought of the Steichen shot as soon as I found the piece of lace in my drawer, I stupidly didn't look it up to study it until *after* I'd taken the shots. Now that I've looked at it, I realise that she has the veil held in front of her rather than ON her; I may try that and see what it looks like. Of course, I don't want to only copy somebody else's photo - I'd rather it be "hommage a" or "inspired by" (especially since there's no way on earth I could match that kind of fabulosity, nor should I try!!)

(for anybody who may not be familiar with the image I mean, it can be seen here http://www.nationalgalleries.org/media/source/vanity_gloriaswanson.jpg)

divamum

A reshoot today was a clear example of how sometimes it works and... sometimes it don't! Oy.

So, in the absence of any good-enough new veil shots to tinker with, I started messin' with the pp on the SP. I think this is the version I like.

Now if I could only come up with a title.....

Also, stick with this crop, or go with something a little tighter?

richtersl

Don't change a thing! This is really, really good.

For a title, how about something like "The Eyes Have It"?

Or "I Can Sing in Any Key".

Tango

i think that last one might need a little less red skin, but if thats what your going for ignore meeeee....

divamum

Thanks Linda and Aaron. I think you're right about the reds too, Aaron... How does this look on that front - better, or has it turned me into the undead? (I took the reds down a little and also added an opaque desat layer).




However, this talk of reds HAS given me the title, which will be "Le Rouge et le Noir"

JAG

Very cute Divamum! I like the second one (the one you have posted in the challenge). Your a pretty lady!

divamum

JAG wrote:

Very cute Divamum! I like the second one (the one you have posted in the challenge). Your a pretty lady!

Hmmm.... now here's an interesting conundrum, because the one in the challenge gallery is before I went back and toned down the reds - I haven't uploaded a corrected one yet.

Could people with calibrated monitors tell me which of the following is better for the skin tones? I don't have a calibrator and it looked ok on my monitor ....

As posted


Desaturated/undead


Reds adjusted in curves

Flyinggina

#3 has the best skin tones. On my monitor, at least, the skin in the original is oversaturated overall and the reds/magentas too strong. You address this specifically in #2, but may have gone just a bit too far with the overall desat.

Still, I do like #2. It's just that #3 has more life in it which goes well with the sassy expression!!

Love the proposed title - Le Rouge et La Noir.

This one is growing on me. Save Gloria for play. Methinks you already have a major contender.

Virginiaa

Velvet-Art

Flyinggina wrote:

#3 has the best skin tones. On my monitor, at least, the skin in the original is oversaturated overall and the reds/magentas too strong. You address this specifically in #2, but may have gone just a bit too far with the overall desat.
Virginiaa

#3 is the more natural looking skin color and the best out of the three in my opinion. ( not that that counts for much!! lol )


Tim

KevXman

WOW!! You have come so far in such a short period of time. You threw yourself into photography completely and with total abandon, and you know what, IT SHOWS. If I was picking from the three versions, I would enter the third one (Reds adjusted in curves). However, that said, I like how in #1 the only real color was in the skin and lips. If you could push the hat and scarf back to being black (grey?) and keep the skin tone from #3, that might be worth checking to see how it looks. Of course all of this is just my opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt (and some lime and tequila). I'm always looking forward to your next image. They just keep getting better, and better, and...

— Kevin

Mike J

KevXman wrote:

WOW!! You have come so far in such a short period of time. You threw yourself into photography completely and with total abandon, and you know what, IT SHOWS.

I could not agree more. Even a beginner like me notices the change over the last couple of months. You present me a moving target that I'm trying to catch up to!

My laptop monitor is not calibrated but I think #3 is the best of the three. For submittal have you thought about cloning out the earring and the white spot on the back of the hat (over your ear)?

divamum

Wow - you guys lustlustlust You have NO idea how much your kind words mean, but seriously - any growth is thanks to YOU, dgrinners, for patiently guiding me along (well, that and the economy cancelling my gigs for this season so I have waaayyyyy too much time on my hands.... :crazy ) - take the credit you all are due! You're wonderful teachers

Back to the matter at hand.... a completely different take on things. Just playin' around (see above note about "too much time on my hands" ) I'm also still working with the "straight" photo to see if I can get the colour balanced without losing the dark quality, but it's proving hard - every time I get the curves the way I want them, the face is much brighter and it loses the low-key feel (to me).

Anyway, here's my latest attempt.



Btw. MikeJ I agreed with your suggestion and tried losing the earring, but when it was removed it turned into a "floating head" - on Johnson's dog-and-spit principle, when the earring is there one assumes a neck that it's hanging next to and a shoulder beneath that more than when it's all black....

ilbcnu

I like the last #3 better than this recent one. I think the texture/effect distracts.

Flyinggina

What fun and what a difference the treatment makes!!

I agree with ilbcnu, though. # 3 from the prior set is still my vote for the challenge.

Also, I have observed entering photos with noise in dGrin challenges can be risky as many people react strongly against it. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't embrace noise if it is giving your photo the feel that you want. In this case, for me at least, the noise distracts and doesn't fit with the lively expression and the color. And I have a relatively high tolerance for noise.

Still, looking at the photo, I find it really neat. I wonder what it would look like if pushed further to look like a poster.

I must say that I agree with the others that it has been amazing to watch your progress. Your enthusiasm and willingness to try, try and try again combined with creative ingenuity is inspiring. The fact that you get such great results is doubly inspiring.

Virginia

Virginia

sweet caroline

Awesome. My monitor isn't calibrated, but I can agree with other posters that skin in #3 plus blacks in #2 would work well. And did I mention awesome?

Caroline

divamum

Thanks again, everybody, for the kind words and feedback. Very much appreciated

Flyinggina wrote:

Still, looking at the photo, I find it really neat. I wonder what it would look like if pushed further to look like a poster.

Well, I guess that means it worked at one level, since that's pretty much what I had in my head! To me it's rather French (which may be why you picked up on the things I "saw" in it ). The whole thing is taking on a rather film-noir feel, which I suppose is appropriate for a low-key attempt :giggle

I must say that I agree with the others that it has been amazing to watch your progress. Your enthusiasm and willingness to try, try and try again combined with creative ingenuity is inspiring. The fact that you get such great

To which I can only repeat my earlier thanks! You are all more than kind, and I can only reiterate that it's thanks to all of *YOU* for your generous insight and patience with my efforts. I appreciate it so much!

And back to matters at hand. I'm hoping that this nails the skin tones with the darker hat, but once again I need those of you with calibrated monitors to lemme know what you see (for which thanks - I know, I know - I REALLY need a monitor calibrator, but just having to save those pennies before I can go shopping....)

I can make the hat even darker very easily (I finally figured out a way of doing it that gives me more control of which areas are altered); the skin tone is a little trickier... (to me this looks a bit light and a hint green, although not as grey as The Undead one, so given that the too-red, too-dark one looked about right to me I am HOPING this is in the ballpark ... :bash)

For reference, Previous #3 (adjusted for reds)



Call this one #4 so I don't get even more confused...

KurtPreston

I love all three but if forced against the wall I think #3 (red Adjusted) was the best cause of the skin tones. I just love the comp and her little smirky smile

divamum

KurtPreston wrote:

I love all three but if forced against the wall I think #3 (red Adjusted) was the best cause of the skin tones. I just love the comp and her little smirky smile

More than this most recent red adjusted one (#4?) Sorry, I'm now so bug-eyed having worked on this off-and-on all day that (nothing like going and checking white balances in between students!) that I can barely keep them straight myself.... :crazy

Thanks for the kind words!

KevXman

Divamum,

I was going to PM you on this because it will be a relatively long post but thought that others might benefit as well. So bear with me everyone.

D, I'm pretty sure that you have already learned about Layer Mask so I will skip that explanation. However, did you realize that you can do the same thing with an Adjustment Layer. I think that you have probably been using one to get a happy balance between your skin tone and the darkness/coloring of your hat and scarf. Then just settling on not blowing out the skin and taking what you get on the hat and scarf. Give this a try.

Step 1: Get your image to where you are total happy with the skin tones. (I'm using the one that I think you have currently settled on for this.)



Step 2: Create a New Adjustment Layer and adjust for the hat and scarf, ignoring what it does to your face. (I used Channel Mixer for this example.)



Step 3: As you can see in the following image the hat and scarf look fine but the skin tone has been completely blown out. Not to worry.



Now be sure to click on the right-hand window of the Adjustment Layer in your layers window. This is the layer mask of the Adjustment Layer. Make sure that your foreground color is 100% black and start painting over the face as you would usually do when using a regular Layer Mask. I would use a soft edged brush in this situation but find one that works for you.

TA-DA! You now have nice skin tones with a B&W hat and scarf.



Hope this helps.

— Kevin

divamum

Umm... WOW.

Keven, this is SO helpful. I do indeed use adjustment layers (in fact, I learned about those before mask layers - ah, the joy of self-taught and taking the "need-to-know" approach, ie instead of any kind of *order*, I learn things as I specifcally need them which is often WAY out of any kind of natural learning pattern!).

But what you have shown me here is ... CHANNELS. Even though I knew they were there and "accessible", I have had no, zero, zip, nada idea how those could/should be used. I will be exploring this further when I get home, but if anybody can link me to more info about them I'd be eternally grateful! For the record, I've been adjusting (or more like trying unsucessfull to adjust) those reds by using either 1. hsl or 2. red only in curves or 3 desaturating. As you've seen, it hasn't worked very well!

I'm not at home right now but the advantage is that I AM on a different monitor, so I can see just how red the original is, and that my latest attempt isn't quite right either. What I did in the most recent one that gives me more control was to adjust the skin tone in curves, but then add a black fill layer which I brushed away off the face and left on the surrounding blacks. Seeing it here on this screen, I can see the hat is still too light, but since I FINALLY realised why I should be saving this as PSDs I can easily go back in and re-tweak! That's no more than moving a slider. (I can't believe I've pretty much been starting from scratch with most of them to date - this small (but extremely important!) discovery will make things sooo much easier.) But the most recent skin tone still isn't right; I have to figure out what I did in the previous iteration that worked so well (alas, I realise that previous one is from a much earlier version where some fo teh skin retouching is different and, because I wasn't at that point saving as a psd, I will need to achieve the same effect on a different file. I haven't quite figured out how ot match that skin tone - is there a way of identifying it "by numbers" so I can recreate the same thing?)

Lastly, I believe that the excess red stems from when I added a layer blended in overlay mode during an earlier phase - if there's a specific technique for resetting skin tone after that particular manipulation, that may also get me in the ballpark again.

Thank you, THANK YOU for your wonderful tutorial above - you've added another whole layer (pun intended) of knowledge to my arsenal of tools!!!

KevXman

Divamum, I always enjoy showing someone something new, especially when they have an AH-HA moment because of it.

Here's a link on Channel Mixers.
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7653a.html

Enjoy
— Kevin

divamum

Ok, a total rework from the ground up working on a different monitor. Problem stemmed from a flawed WB on initial processing.

Any better? (<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" > <---- that would be my eyes bugging out after 3hrs of working on this thing.....:crazy)

richtersl

Maybe my white balance is off because in the latest version you look a bit ashen.

Have you tried any B&W variations on this shot? Kev's screen print with you in B&W looks rather nice.

divamum

richtersl wrote:

Maybe my white balance is off because in the latest version you look a bit ashen.

Have you tried any B&W variations on this shot? Kev's screen print with you in B&W looks rather nice.

Bugger.

It looks a bit ashen on mine too, but because I don't trust the monitor due to no &$*!&!&@ calibrator (waves fist at the economic cosmos for cancelling gigs and leaving me with NO MONEY FOR TOYS!!) and the other one was sooo red, I gave it a whirl. Also, even though I don't apply them I will often use the "auto" levels settings in my software as a checking system (ie, if those make a MARKED change, I know I"m way out) - on this occasion, they keep making it bluer, so I hoped this might be about right. But something in the WB on this is obviously funky, I just can't figure out what it is.

I thought of BW too, but I just don't like it as much. Ok, back to the drawing board again..... TOMORROW. My eyes are poppin' out!!

THANKS for responding - sorry to rely on you guys as a calibrator, but at the moment that's my best bet.... Thank you!

JAG

actually I think the one you already have was fine and not too red. Warm but not red. This latest version is too ashen on my monitor. I liked the warmer tones. You could just desaturate it a little verses trying to play with wb. Just as a thought it might be worth a try if your trying to down play the color.