hey binghott, i can get chicks too!

DoctorIt

that stud binghott isn't the only one that can get lovely young ladies to pose for him...
:lol3

I lucked out with a few hours of gorgeous sunlight before the incoming storm turned everything to that lovely dead gray color. I only have a borrowed 50/1.4 at the moment (I know, tough life), so I found it hard to get some of the landscapes and nature I wanted to out on our hike today, but rather than be disappointed, I eyed a nice little portrait spot and persuaded T to pose a bit.

I would have loved some fill flash, but I'm reasonably happy with the overall result. I'm super happy with the colors and the sharpness. My new camera and I are getting along well.
:nod





T likes to ham it up (shot 1), so please, no comments on the cheesy smile, we're not going for Vogue here, just appeasing my learning of the new gear.

Thusie

Lovely lady Erik and very nice shots..I like her smile, very mischievous and quite cute

binghott

DoctorIt wrote:

that stud binghott isn't the only one that can get lovely young ladies to pose for him...

thanks. she is absolutely beautiful, i love her smile and she has great eyes. and you are right, that is terrific light. if you play with the contrast and sharpness of her eyes you could give them a real pop.

i really like that second shot, she has a very natural smile and looks extremely comfortable.

well done!

4labs

Give a guy a Nikon and he instantly takes better pics. Great start with the new cam Doc! She is beautiful as are the piccies.

DavidTO

Nice shots, Doc.

Watch your skin tones, these are too magenta relative to yellow.

DoctorIt

DavidTO wrote:

Nice shots, Doc.

Watch your skin tones, these are too magenta relative to yellow.

whats that mean? are they too yellow or too magenta? No seriously, i'm a bit curves-challenged if thats what your talking about.

windoze

DavidTO wrote:

Nice shots, Doc.

Watch your skin tones, these are too magenta relative to yellow.

Hi david,
dont want to start trouble on here but i gotta tell you that this whole magenta yellow thing is puzzling to me.... ive read the info but in my humble opinion -Magenta looks better than yellow.....
My mother ( may she rest in peace ) always said a pink face is a healthy face and a yellow face looks jaundice...

well that said, i know in the long run you and everyone else is right but, I still dont get it......

when i look at my pics of people that "I think" would be good ones, they would not meet "smugmug's" printing standards.... they would say they magenta values are too high ...

it's just one more thing i dont do right.... photography is a tough business, each year ive come to learn how much i dont know

now im just ramblin - sorry....


troy

DavidTO

DoctorIt wrote:

whats that mean? are they too yellow or too magenta? No seriously, i'm a bit curves-challenged if thats what your talking about.

Doc, I've grabbed the info palette for this shot, and placed to Color Sampler Tool points: #1 and #2. The two points I marked were both on her forehead in the first shot. Basically they're the same thing, but one's in LAB, the other's in CMYK.

In LAB the A should never be greater than the B for skin--UNLESS you want the skin to look sunburned.

In CMYK, the Y should always be a few percentages greater than the M, and the C should be at, oh, I forget, like 10-15% (I never use CMYK, so I forget, but I should use it more!).

Also, you could boost the color a bit by your method of choice...but the main thing is the balance of magenta and yellow.

Clear?

Owen

Beautiful girl!

DavidTO

windoze wrote:

My mother ( may she rest in peace ) always said a pink face is a healthy face and a yellow face looks jaundice...

You could certainly go too far and make someone look jaundice, but that would mean that you don't have enough magenta...you need some, but just make sure it's not more than the yellow...unless you want it to look sunburned...

DanielB

beautiful model. looks like that cameras putin on a show for ya:D


oh, one more thing.


do you guys share red sweaters erik? :poke

:lol4

DoctorIt

DanielB wrote:

do you guys share red sweaters erik? :poke

Yup. How do you think I can afford a D2h? We have to pass it back and forth for photos otherwise the nudity squad would come after us.

DoctorIt

DavidTO wrote:

Clear?

As mud.

I hadn't really worked on this photo all that much, but I see that you're right, its a bit off. I actually didn't know that fact about LAB for skin.

If anyone wants to have a go at some lab curves on either of these shots by all means (the closer one is my fav), I'd love to see the results - the curve results too, I'm always trying to get a better handle on working with them.

Now I have to go hang out and watch a movie with the "lovely, beautiful, comfortable model" before she yells at me for ignoring her. thanks all for the comments, MrsIt is blushing as we speak.

DavidTO

DoctorIt wrote:

As mud.

I hadn't really worked on this photo all that much, but I see that you're right, its a bit off. I actually didn't know that fact about LAB for skin.

If anyone wants to have a go at some lab curves on either of these shots by all means (the closer one is my fav), I'd love to see the results - the curve results too, I'm always trying to get a better handle on working with them.

You can do all the work in RGB, you just have to read the numbers in LAB or CMYK in order to see the balance of magenta and yellow. But you don't need to actually leave RGB to do it...

Andy

DoctorIt wrote:

As mud.

I hadn't really worked on this photo all that much, but I see that you're right, its a bit off. I actually didn't know that fact about LAB for skin.

You don't need LAB - it's fine to learn it but start with RGB corrections first:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone
http://www.smugmug.com/help/red-skin-tones

Your original:


This is a 15-second improvement, following the instructions on the first link I gave you above. I only did the skin - If working on the original I'd have left the eyes and teeth alone.

bwg

Andy wrote:

You don't need LAB - it's fine to learn it but start with RGB corrections first:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone
http://www.smugmug.com/help/red-skin-tones


This is a 15-second improvement, following the instructions on the first link I gave you above. I only did the skin - If working on the original I'd have left the eyes and teeth alone.

she looks like a perdue chicken!

i'm with windoze on this one. i actually prefer the original....i have a hard time following the "formula" and not getting perdue people all the time.

DJ-S1

MrsIt is very fair-skinned, and after walking her dog out in the snow for a while she would definitely look a bit rosy. I think the original is probably very close to reality and I prefer it in this case.

Nice shot Doc, definitely does her justice. The new rig suits you, looking forward to seeing you post shots again.

Andy

bigwebguy wrote:

she looks like a perdue chicken!

i'm with windoze on this one. i actually prefer the original....i have a hard time following the "formula" and not getting perdue people all the time.

no doubt - no doubt - the "formula" is meant to be a guide only. Cold day = red cheeks. But pretty much all caucasians have more yellow in the skin than magenta.

But - nobody would know the skin color better than the Doctor!

DavidTO

Andy wrote:

no doubt - no doubt - the "formula" is meant to be a guide only. Cold day = red cheeks. But pretty much all caucasians have more yellow in the skin than magenta.

But - nobody would know the skin color better than the Doctor!

If you check the nose and cheeks in Andy's correction you'll see that they still have more magenta than yellow. Overall the balance it better, and she still has a rosy glow to her cheeks. The thing about this is: the magenta problems show up much more in print, for some reason. Problems are much less apparent on our monitors...

DJ-S1

DavidTO wrote:

The thing about this is: the magenta problems show up much more in print, for some reason. Problems are much less apparent on our monitors...

That's very true, it'a always worse in prints.

DoctorIt

bigwebguy wrote:

she looks like a perdue chicken!

:uhoh You can say that again!

T has very, very fair skin - from her Irish mom (and thick hair from her greek dad, our child is going to be a monkey!), and yes, I definitely wanted rosy cheeks, it's winter after all.

That "fix" is definitely not a fix, I like chicken and all, don't get me wrong. I'm going to look into those links tomorrow as I agree the original could use some work... but not in that direction!

DoctorIt

DJ-S1 wrote:

The new rig suits you, looking forward to seeing you post shots again.

thanks, me too - I almost forgot where the button for the images was

I'm wondering if maybe its a monitor thing. Maybe Andy's fix, in print, would look much better than mine. I'll dust off my EyeOne calibrator tomorrow and do a long overdue check on the monitor.

DavidTO

DoctorIt wrote:

:uhoh You can say that again!

T has very, very fair skin - from her Irish mom (and thick hair from her greek dad, our child is going to be a monkey!), and yes, I definitely wanted rosy cheeks, it's winter after all.

That "fix" is definitely not a fix, I like chicken and all, don't get me wrong. I'm going to look into those links tomorrow as I agree the original could use some work... but not in that direction!

Definitely, try it. Get the shot where you want it, take note of the numbers, and then print it with "True Color", not "Auto". Auto will correct the skin tones and you won't know the effect of your work. Like I said, the magenta thing is much more noticeable in print. Plus, there are plenty of places in the image where the magenta is greater than the yellow even in a correction like Andy's, meaning that her nose and cheeks will have a rosy glow. Plus, the guidelines are just that, guidelines, but the numbers don't lie. If the magenta is greater than the yellow the print will come back with her looking pink...

Andy

DoctorIt wrote:

That "fix" is definitely not a fix, I like chicken and all, don't get me wrong. I'm going to look into those links tomorrow as I agree the original could use some work... but not in that direction!

If not printing - leave it alone. If you are printing - you'll want to be sure that the yellow values are higher than the magenta values.

erich6

Why are prints so different? I thought that as long as you were in the gamut of the printer and calibrated your monitor and used the right ICC profiles you would be OK....

DavidTO

erich6 wrote:

Why are prints so different? I thought that as long as you were in the gamut of the printer and calibrated your monitor and used the right ICC profiles you would be OK....

I'm not sure exactly, I just know that errors are much more evident in print. It just is. your eye is more forgiving on your monitor, is my theory. Not that I could say why...maybe someone else (edgework) could chime in and either explain it or tell me I'm full of it...

DoctorIt

Well, I sat down and dit it. Made the adjustments as suggested by the smugmug skin tones tutorial, made some prints on my trusty little Canon Pixma IP4000, and lo and behold, Andy was way right. My original makes T look way too pink. And although the easy fix (just turning down the blue channel and desaturating red a bit) looks a little weird on the screen, the print is definitely better.

I tried the "advanced" CMYK method, but I'm not pleased with it. Of the 3 prints I have on the desk, it looks the strangest, my snow and backgrounds look too greenish/yellow even though T is ok. I guess that method would take some masking work as well to not affect things other than skin.

Thanks again for help guys.

original (looked pink in print):


v2, using the easy smugmug method (reduce blue channel, desat reds):
*my favorite in print*


v3, using the smugmug adv (CMYK mode, crank up Y, turn down M and C)


Thanks for the help - this has been educational!

DoctorIt

binghott wrote:

if you play with the contrast and sharpness of her eyes you could give them a real pop.

I'd like to hear more about this

(and btw, yeah she's comfortable, she's been putting up with me for over 3 years! )

binghott

DoctorIt wrote:

I'd like to hear more about this

someone had once posted a link to instructions on how to do this on nobs forums. i had saved the link, but now it's like members only and i think you have to pay.

anyway, it starts with dodge on the eyes. i'm not really sure if it's supposed to be highlights or midtones, but it should be around 6% exposure. just circle around the colored part of the eye, try not to hit the black or white, but it's not the end of the world if you do. once you've made it light enough, select the eyes (i don't remember if you're supposed to select the whites or not as well). create a new layer via copy. you need to usm this layer and boost the contrast. i wish i remembered the usm numbers, but play around with it you'll find something good. then in the brightness/contrast controls boost the contrast up like 15-20, higher than that screws it up. i usually use 18. that's all folks. now your eyes should have some serious pop. just don't get carried away with raising the values too high and you should have great eyes. that's what i do. i feel like i should post this in the technique forum or something. . .

i hope this helps!

DavidTO

DoctorIt wrote:

I'd like to hear more about this

(and btw, yeah she's comfortable, she's been putting up with me for over 3 years! )

Start with making the overall image pop before you dig into the eyes, IMO.

See the link in my sig, here's what I got following those steps:

EDIT: I didn't look closely and grabbed your CMYK fix version, the one you like least, but anyway, the pop still works, IMO.

binghott

DavidTO wrote:

Start with making the overall image pop before you dig into the eyes, IMO.

i've had no problems doing the eyes first, but i'll try it your way sometime. . .