The first can be helped by the shadow highlight tool, but I would still trash it. The reason is the bright background in the upper left. It distracts and pulls you away from the subject.
#2 is nice. But her face should be highlighted more or lighter than the rest. I'm sure Rutt has some lab work that would get it there. Also, green probably isn;t the best color to wear for an outdoor shot ith a green backgound.
#3 is nice but I think a tighter crop would help it more.
So in my opinion, toss #1, jazz up #2, tigher crop on #3.
The first can be helped by the shadow highlight tool, but I would still trash it. The reason is the bright background in the upper left. It distracts and pulls you away from the subject.
#2 is nice. But her face should be highlighted more or lighter than the rest. I'm sure Rutt has some lab work that would get it there. Also, green probably isn;t the best color to wear for an outdoor shot ith a green backgound.
#3 is nice but I think a tighter crop would help it more.
So in my opinion, toss #1, jazz up #2, tigher crop on #3.
I would toss 1 and 2, maybe after some experimenting just for practice.
#3, could be a real winner, I would not necessarily crop tighter, but would crop to offset a little, basically get her out of the center a bit. After that, I would work on the eyes a little ala Owen, or perhaps some other technique (there is a post I could not find that describes a technique that goes as follows: Cliff notes version (dodge highlights 13%, copy separate layer, sharpen, contrast/brightness)) Just a hair more pop to the eyes and that is a very nice portrait.
FWIW, YMMV,
XO,
EDIT,
I experimented a little bit with the picture, couple of additional remarks.
1) the large white area created by the sweater kinda eliminates the options for a tighter crop, as the shirt becomes too big of a part of the picture.
2) I tried the eyes, but at this picture size/resolution, the (eye)technique mentioned doesn't work very well, the original would likely work better.
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. Mark Twain
I think No. 3 is quite nice. I hope you don't mind me playing with it. I would crop it and take out the yellow cast on it. I played with CMYK to get it out. I desaturated a bit to take the orange out of the hair. This is the low resolution image that I downloaded, but I think it works pretty well.
Comments
The first can be helped by the shadow highlight tool, but I would still trash it. The reason is the bright background in the upper left. It distracts and pulls you away from the subject.
#2 is nice. But her face should be highlighted more or lighter than the rest. I'm sure Rutt has some lab work that would get it there. Also, green probably isn;t the best color to wear for an outdoor shot ith a green backgound.
#3 is nice but I think a tighter crop would help it more.
So in my opinion, toss #1, jazz up #2, tigher crop on #3.
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I would toss 1 and 2, maybe after some experimenting just for practice.
#3, could be a real winner, I would not necessarily crop tighter, but would crop to offset a little, basically get her out of the center a bit. After that, I would work on the eyes a little ala Owen, or perhaps some other technique (there is a post I could not find that describes a technique that goes as follows: Cliff notes version (dodge highlights 13%, copy separate layer, sharpen, contrast/brightness)) Just a hair more pop to the eyes and that is a very nice portrait.
FWIW, YMMV,
XO,
EDIT,
I experimented a little bit with the picture, couple of additional remarks.
1) the large white area created by the sweater kinda eliminates the options for a tighter crop, as the shirt becomes too big of a part of the picture.
2) I tried the eyes, but at this picture size/resolution, the (eye)technique mentioned doesn't work very well, the original would likely work better.
Mark Twain
Some times I get lucky and when that happens I show the results here: http://www.xo-studios.com
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