Sunset Swing

Bryan

It was a postcard setting, of course I did not have a proper flash and I had a tough time getting a good image. It did not help that Skyler was not wanting to have his picture taken that day. But i Love the shot none the less.

Here is what I ended up with, after minor hue and sat corrections.



I just can't seem to figure out how to get his skin tone to look right. No matter what I do it looks like he in in front of a studio backdrop. Any suggestions on what I should be thinking about here?

Here is the original:



Big file is found here, if you think it helps...
http://gifford-family.smugmug.com/photos/4584075-O.jpg

digismile

Skyler against the Sky

Bryan wrote:

It was a postcard setting, of course I did not have a proper flash and I had a tough time getting a good image. It did not help that Skyler was not wanting to have his picture taken that day. But i Love the shot none the less.

Here is what I ended up with, after minor hue and sat corrections.



I just can't seem to figure out how to get his skin tone to look right. No matter what I do it looks like he in in front of a studio backdrop. Any suggestions on what I should be thinking about here?

Here is the original:



Big file is found here, if you think it helps...
http://gifford-family.smugmug.com/photos/4584075-O.jpg

Bryan,
Here's my humble attempt to improve the picture before I head off to work.

In looking at the your retouched photo, you can see a blue cast due to the different color temperature from the flash compared to the big ball in the sky. So these were my basic steps. Hopefully you'll be able to follow the general steps.

1. Add an adjustment screen layer at about 70% opacity to brighten Skyler.
2. Attached 3 Color Picker spots to what I thought should be white. Two on the right and left upper chest on his shirt and one on the toe of his shoe. From these I could see that the blue channel was higher than the Red & Green.
3. I added an Adjustment Color Balance Layer, clicked on Tone Balance Highlights and adjusted the Red & Green upward to match the 3 numbers for the color pickers on his chest. This got rid of the blue cast. (Note this can also be easily done using levels or curves. I used this because it was fast this morning).
4. Now that the color better, I wanted to fix the sunset again because the screen layer brightened it up. Since the contrast was so good, I used the magic wand to quickly select the sky (it doesn't do it in one click, but it is still pretty fast.
5. I clicked on the screen layer and selected Layer->Add Layer Mask->Hide Selection. This added a black layer mask that blocks the effect of the screen layer on the sunset. Now you have the sunset back the way it was before, but Skyler and the foreground lighter than it was.
6. Finally, to warm up the skin tones a bit, I added a Hue/Saturation Layer and increased the saturation a bit on the red and green layer.

So the real trick in my opinion is being able to adjust your colors and saturation on Skyler independently of the sunset. That was accomplished by the layer mask.

Because of the differences in light sources, it is hard to not make it totally look like a backdrop. You would need to match the color temperature of the sun. You could therefore oversaturate the reds /yellows and make his skin color a very warm color. I prefer it to look like fill flash, but it's your choice. I left the garbage can in the photo so that you could see the difference in its color to the original.

Hope this is of help.
Regards,
Brad

Adjusted Photo

Bryan

And that is why I love this site. You guys are quick and love to teach! I am such a nob!

Time to head out and get a real text book.