Busker!

DonRicklin

Mark William Bryan a classical guitar busker in Quebec City, down on the River Front. A couple years ago. Great listening.



Don

thoth

He looks like quite an entertainer, Don! The shot looks a bit underexposed (I assume it was getting dark outside). I think a B&W conversion might make good use of all the dark areas in the shot.

DonRicklin

thoth wrote:

He looks like quite an entertainer, Don! The shot looks a bit underexposed (I assume it was getting dark outside). I think a B&W conversion might make good use of all the dark areas in the shot.

Actually, I plan to fix the eposure! Went I posted this to SM awhile back I was using an over bright sceen (reason for some images printing too dark! ). Having fixed that I see this is too dark, too, so I will repost soon. Might try a B&W rendition, too. Glad you like it. Another of him as in teh Drign game thread (recent) and more in my Busker and Portraits galleries.

Don

thoth

Ah great, glad to hear it was just a monitor calibration issue. I'll go and check out the rest!

DonRicklin

The brightened version:



Don

rutt

As long as we're fussing with this one, I'd like to see deeper shadows in the brightened version.

I used Dan Margulis' Portrait Workflow to get this:



In particular:

1. Green luminosity layer
2. L curve in LAB to deepen shadows and get more contrast on his face
3. HIRALOAM sharpening

DonRicklin

rutt wrote:

As long as we're fussing with this one, I'd like to see deeper shadows in the brightened version.


In particular:

1. Green luminosity layer
2. L curve in LAB to deepen shadows and get more contrast on his face
3. HIRALOAM sharpening

First it's a street shot! Second, I don't do much PP is PS (even though I have CS4E). I'm a Lightroom Man! I don't tend to play with my images, much.

Black point setting and some dodging I can do!



Don

rutt

DonRicklin wrote:

First it's a street shot! Second, I don't do much PP is PS (even though I have CS4E). I'm a Lightroom Man! I don't tend to play with my images, much.

To each his own. But I want to push back on the attitude if not the practice of this statement.

1. Just because it's a street shot doesn't mean that it isn't worth some work in post. In fact, you have done this to good effect.
2. Lightroom is OK as far as it goes, but it's limiting compared to Photoshop. I don't mean that you have to deal with its full range of options afresh for each image. But there are a few basic PS moves which as far as I know have no Lightroom analogs and which make almost every image better. It doesn't take long to apply them once you know them and they can make dramatic improvements.

For this image, green luminosity channel blending makes a big difference:



This is an easy move in PS, and very simple to capture in an action. See here for more than you probably want to know about this move. Most times it's much more simple.

Setting a black point is something we agree upon and also something that Lightroom can do, so let's ignore that.

High Radius Low Amount sharpening is also easy once you know how to do it. Even B.D. does this, so we know it's not PS rocket science. (I was surprised when he demonstrated it in his Documentary Photography class last spring.) And again, it makes a big difference for this image:

]

Skip to the bottom of this post for an explanation of this technique. These days, I suggest a lower amount as a starting point than Dan does, say 25.

I could show you tons of my own shots lifted from mediocre to something much more with just these three PS techniques. Certainly PS hacking isn't everyone's cup of tea, but learning a few simple things can really be worth the investment of time.

DonRicklin

rutt wrote:

To each his own. But I want to push back on the attitude if not the practice of this statement.

Thanks for the extremely informative feedback, but I am sticking with LR for now. Not at all interested in regular PS post PP.

As it is I need to revisit a lot of images affected by the mere brightness of my monitor when first posted.

Thanks again.

Don