Trying Again
Hope this works. (I goofed the last time I tried posting this portrait) This is one of the many shots I took of Ty, she loves posing. Please feel free to tell me like it is. That's how I learn. Thanks for being so friendly and helpful.
Cacee
0
Comments
As far as comments for the picture as is:
I like the pose, but would either go IN (tighter crop/composition) or out (show more of the leading shoulder)
Looking at her left eye (picture right) she has very nice colored eyes, but the picture doesn't show that in the r eye (picture left) due to that being in the shadow. A reflector or even a piece of posterboard (White) would have brought that out.
As far as postprocessing, this picture is extremely sharp, I like that on the eyes and the hair, however for girls her age, the skin would benefit from being a lil softer, hence the request if postprocessing would be OK.
FWIW,
XO,
Mark Twain
Some times I get lucky and when that happens I show the results here: http://www.xo-studios.com
I'll add two other minor distractions in the photo:
1. I know it's impossible to get this pose otherwise, but her arm/shoulder are obviously quite soft and kind of have that unformed blob in the foreground effect - distracting.
2. I'm guessing I can see a hint of braces in her smile? Show 'em off! Or cover 'em up completely. Otherwise, it leaves the viewer guessing as to whats going on. Kinda sorta, not in a bad way, but it caught my eye.
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
First I work with healing brush (yes,yes - perfect skin is rare here...)
then
- work with levels.
- sharpen (unsharp mask 98/0.4/0) eyes, (sometimes hair and lips)
- if the photo is bright enough, I use Harry's method
[BTW in Russia they say 'he hiccup' in this case - I mention him too often in my posts, hey Harry - do you hear me? - what about USA?]
copy layer/set blending mode to 'Multiply'/ Gaussian blur (depending on sizes of objects in the composition) 2-20/set opacity to what you need...
With thanks to Yuri, there are plenty of possibilities in that paragragh to create a really beautiful shot.
Good luck
Stan
Heal the skin,
Hide the braces.
Soften the skin,
Brighten up the hair,
Shed some soft gold light into her eyes,
and we get...
Ted Szukalski - Gallery of Digital Photography
Vote for me on Cool Photoblogs
How it was done:
Your photo had a reddish tint to it so before I did anything else I adjusted the Contrast and Color. These are built in fuctions in photoshop.
1. The Healing brush is a feature of Photoshop CS and CS2. It is easy to use - You select part of the skin that looks great while holding holding down the ALT key then you just paint over the skin you want to heal. It is really trivial. I went a bit further than just covering the acne spots and healed the under eyes area too.
2. Hide the braces: I cut and pasted a part of her lips from both top and bottom lip. This closes her mouth but leaves obvious marks that it is a patch. Here comes the healing brush again, which allows for blending in of the pasted area.
3. Now you need to blur the skin. There are many ways to do it - select the skin and simply use Gaussian blur. The trick here is not to over do it as the skin will become unnnatural. In my case I use a very good plugin called "nik Color Efex Pro 2.0" and one of its fuctions is Dynamic Skin Softener, which allows you to blur based on selected color.
4. The hair comes to life with a bit of sharpening. I do not use any set values but play with them for a maximum effect without going overboard. If you do oversharpen you may destroy the fine skin that you created in previous steps.
5. Brighten up the eyes. I used the above plugin again, but this time I used "reflector: soft gold" function. It takes a bit to configure it right. WIthout the plugin: select both eyes with lasso selector and than make them lighter using Variations menu. Be careful not to change it too much as it will become obvious.
Whole process takes less time than to type this up once you do it once or twice. Good software is like good lens - won't make you an artist but will make your life easier
Ted Szukalski - Gallery of Digital Photography
Vote for me on Cool Photoblogs
I cropped the bottom and cloned out some of the shirt. I healed the skin and brought the contrast up in the right eye (her right) I desturated the red out of the white of her eye.. I brought the contrast up in the hair and desaturated the skin a little. I also added a little gaussian blur and removed it from the eyes and lower lip. Any improvement?