Engagement shots

SeascapeS

Advice? Anything I should have done differently?

1.



2.



3.



4. - This is for Save the Date (date to be added later)



5.


6.

Agnieszka

Hi there.

I'll move this to the weddings forum, if that's ok

SeascapeS

Agnieszka wrote: »

Hi there.

I'll move this to the weddings forum, if that's ok

Sure!:D

awoo

I really like 6. And, gosh! the sky is amazing!

SweetScenePhoto

#6 is the best - for showing intimacy. If you had any of the two of them looking at each other... or maybe both looking off into the distance (as if to see their future) - those are kinda cool.

Matthew Saville

1.) Something is weird with the clouds. Are they photoshopped at all?

2.) Something is weird with the web resolution. Are you using an action that re-sizes and sharpens your images? They look like they're enlarged from a smaller size.


...Other than that, not much to critique. I mean the poses are slightly un-original, but then again posing isn't my area of expertise so I'm not in a position to advise you on what you SHOULD do, posing-wise. All I can say is that you should study the photographers whose work you admire, and build on that.

=Matt=

SeascapeS

Ha - those are not clouds - it is the reflection of the clouds in a lake. I just happened to see it as we walked by and had them stand there. I was surprised that it came out as blue as it did; the lake is green.

Yes, I did resize the pictures. I had to, they got very small after processing. How can I avoid the fuzzy look? I have to load them on CD for a slideshow and want to get the clear picture that I initially had.

Danspage

Is this done on a green screen, the clouds look unreal. I do see that you used on camera flash(sm shadow under chins). I like #1 and #6. In #6 a crop with more space in front would be nice. Check your photos, all but #1 the people in the center. Sometimes that's ok, but check your set and see how many times you centered.

"Ha - those are not clouds - it is the reflection of the clouds in a lake."

Cool

SeascapeS

Yes, I do have a tendency to center - bad habit. I'm working on it.

Irrok

I too think the clouds are a bit suspect... I'll take you word on it though. I like 2, 3 and 6. What part of PA.?

SeascapeS

I'm being honest, the clouds are a reflection on the lake. Here's one where you can see where they are standing. I'm about 45 minutes from Pittsburgh.

Irrok

Wow! I guess with all the PS Hanky Panky it has made me a non believer... I used to live in Monroeville. That is one shinny lake... lol

lzfoto

I don't know if its my computer, but for me, these are too soft...Number one looks like you tried to photoshop their skin and also soften everyhtihng around them.. Otherwise not bad.

SeascapeS

Fellow Smuggers, I have no reason to lie about it. I saw what I thought was a cool opportunity and took it. I was happy with the outcome and the couple was too. It was a surreal setting and I don't know if the conditions could be duplicated - I wish!

The originals are much clearer, I lost some of the clarity after processing. Maybe I did too much skin smoothing.

Now on to the next question - what is the best way to increase size and resolution after processing? I have to do that this week.

Oh, I'm about 1/2 hour from Monroeville.

Matthew Saville

SeascapeS wrote: »

Fellow Smuggers, I have no reason to lie about it. I saw what I thought was a cool opportunity and took it. I was happy with the outcome and the couple was too. It was a surreal setting and I don't know if the conditions could be duplicated - I wish!

The originals are much clearer, I lost some of the clarity after processing. Maybe I did too much skin smoothing.

Now on to the next question - what is the best way to increase size and resolution after processing? I have to do that this week...

DANG, I'm good! I KNEW the clouds were upside down! :-P The wider image showing the reflection makes sense though, thanks for posting that.

Now, as for the resolution of the images: Are you saying that the FINAL image you have saved is smaller than these ones here on D-Grin, and you had to increase their image size to display them?

If you performed a lot of edits and somehow managed to NOT save a larger image than just a few hundred pixels, then unfortunately your editing work has gone to waste.

Hopefully you DO have a high-res copy of your worked-on images somewhere? Take that image, and either output a high-res JPG to upload to SmugMug and then just embed the "L" size thumbnail, OR, you can take that high-res image and manually re-size it to exactly 700 or 800 pixels, and just upload that image. (Best for blogging and Facebook etc, and you can apply your own sharpening to the blog-res images, which is nice.)

Just remember, once you decrease the resolution of an image, there is NO going back. That copy of the image is good for nothing other than a thumbnail. So you have to go back to the high-res version of the image, either a high-res edit or the original image itself.


Here's an example of two images. One I uploaded to SmugMug in high-res, the full 12 megapixels, and I just let SmugMug re-size it for me. The other image, I re-sized,sharpened, and watermarked the image myself. (For Facebook)


(This is the "L" size thumbnail of the high-res image I uploaded to SmugMug.)



(This is the "O" size original of the low-res image I re-sized etc. by myself...)



Take care,
=Matt=

Agnieszka

Hi there. OK, so first off, great eyes you got there, .... the cloud reflections in the background are amazing! BUT in the photos are definitely too soft. I don't know what camera you're using, but you either zoomed in (cropped) wayyyy too much in post processing or you overdid the post processing itself. I do like the photos, but their eyes are just not crisp and that ruins it for me :cry

I do hope you still have the originals. I'd definitely go back, and either turn down the processing or just get my fingers away from the crop tool.

Lovely set tough Hope to see more from you on here

Matthew Saville

Trust me guys I've seen tens of thousands of images online and I can definitely say that the softness you see in the images is *only* caused by image re-sizing issues. All Seascapes needs to do is figure out how to re-size and sharpen images properly, or how to get back to a high-res copy and upload that to SmugMug and let them handle the thumbnail generation...

For example, here is a properly resized image, that went straight from 12 megapixels to 850 pixels (long) ....compared to the SAME image re-sized to 550 pixels long, and then BACK to 850 pixels:






(And this last image is actually the SAME as that funky looking middle image, just down-sized BACK to SmugMug's "S" size. ...You can't even tell that it used to look funky! You see, it's ALL about carefully managing the re-sizing process...)


=Matt=

SeascapeS

Matthew, you ARE good. No one else I know noticed that the clouds were upside down. I'm not sure I'd notice that in a picture either.

Okay, this is my problem and I can fix it, I just need to do some work. I do have the originals on my computer (I know better than to save over them). They are also still on my camera, and loaded on a flash drive. I use both PS and Corel, not both for every picture, but they do different things so I use them according to what I want to do. Here is my mistake: I uploaded them to Smug after editing, but used Picnik for the final editing. It's when I pull them from the Smug site after that they lose resolution. So...what I have to do is go back to my edited shots, do the final editing in PS, and load those on to the disc for the slide show that the bride wants. No more Picnik! It was great for those facial flaws......

SeascapeS

I can definitely see the difference in the shots posted.

Question - I need these for a slide show. I re-edited my 51 (already previously edited) shots in PS, they stayed at 1.5 to 2 MB. Then I pulled them into Corel and they went down to about 800 to 900 KB. However, the dimensions are still about 2500 to 3000 and they look fine on a large screen saver. Should they be okay for a slide show or should I edit the originals all over again?

The ones I have shown above were loaded onto SmugMug and then copied onto my computer. The dimensions at that point were about 400 x 600 and yes, I did resize.

I have a Nikon D 3000.

Matthew Saville

SeascapeS wrote: »

I can definitely see the difference in the shots posted.

Question - I need these for a slide show. I re-edited my 51 (already previously edited) shots in PS, they stayed at 1.5 to 2 MB. Then I pulled them into Corel and they went down to about 800 to 900 KB. However, the dimensions are still about 2500 to 3000 and they look fine on a large screen saver. Should they be okay for a slide show or should I edit the originals all over again?

The ones I have shown above were loaded onto SmugMug and then copied onto my computer. The dimensions at that point were about 400 x 600 and yes, I did resize.

I have a Nikon D 3000.

Yeah, that's slightly convoluted as a workflow so I can't be sure where they lost all their file size OR image size, but you should probably try and get EVERYTHING done in one place. Especially if it's a JPG image, you just don't want to be saving it in one program and re-opening it to edit in another program. That will cut the file size down because of compression, and after two or three times it will become quite visible in any decent sized print.

If you can, avoid both Corel and Picnik. I know you think you might need these programs for certain retouching tools, but honestly I don't see any editing that should have required either, at least not at first glance.

Good luck with the re-edit! You shoul be okay if you save the images as JPG's right in Photoshop and burn those files directly to the disc...

=Matt=

SeascapeS

Here's my problem now. There is shine on their faces and it's making me crazy. He has one noticeable pimple. I don't have the right program to take it off. I tried in PS and couldn't make it look natural. I have to get this done and move on to other things, but I'm just not happy with the finished product.

Initially, the bride only wanted shots for a Save the Date card, so I wasn't too concerned with file size since she only wanted a small print. Now that she wants the slide show for her wedding, I can't use the ones I had finished. Also, if they are going to be shown on a large TV sized screen, I can't have shine and zits showing. I'm extremely frustrated.

What is the smallest file size that I can probably get away with?

SeascapeS

I figured it out. CD is finished.