Portrait help please...again!

Elaine

Awhile back, I got some feedback and help on dealing with a greenish tint on this girl's nose (see thread here).

I think I've improved this issue, but I could use some more specific help on dealing with light and color issues. I am just kicking myself for not paying attention to my camera settings and getting such a dark picture to begin with...here's the original (eeeks!!)




As I said, I've worked on the green nose and tried some things to improve the rest, but now I'm afraid I'm just making a mess of it!




I only have Photoshop Elements 3.0, so I'm probably somewhat limited in my scope of tools, but can someone tell me how to get this closer to being right?? (skin tones and lighting). I'd appreciate it so much and you will save me from pulling out all my hair over what should be a really lovely picture!!

Elaine

gus

Im certainly no portrait shooter but you need a light source. Adjusting the shot like you did is ok but you cant make up what wasnt there to begin with as you are aware.

Elaine

Ah well, I know it was a tall order...just trying to do as good of a salvage job as I can. I guess I'll call this one a live and learn experience.

Zanotti

Beutiful Girl


Better?

ziggy53

Elaine,

What would you think of this attempt?

ziggy53

LilleG

What you need is Capture NX. There's a 30-day free trial available if you haven't tried it. I used Control Points to reduce the green shadows, one on her nose between her eyes, one below her lip, one on her left jaw and one just above and to the outside and another just below and to the outside of her right eye. Hope this helps.

Lee

Elaine

ziggy53 wrote:

Elaine,

What would you think of this attempt?

ziggy53

I really like this! I can still see a bit of green shadow, but if I could get the picture looking this good, I think I could take care of the green (maybe LilleG's tactics).

Please share how you did this!

Elaine

Elaine

LilleG wrote:

What you need is Capture NX. There's a 30-day free trial available if you haven't tried it. I used Control Points to reduce the green shadows, one on her nose between her eyes, one below her lip, one on her left jaw and one just above and to the outside and another just below and to the outside of her right eye. Hope this helps.

Lee

Thanks for the tip! I like how you took care of the green shadows. Maybe I'll combine this with Ziggy's lighting treatment. Yay!

Elaine

ziggy53

Elaine wrote:

I really like this! I can still see a bit of green shadow, but if I could get the picture looking this good, I think I could take care of the green (maybe LilleG's tactics).

Please share how you did this!

Elaine

Thanks Elaine,

I started with PhotoShop Levels. The middle tones seem afwully dark, and the highlights need to be expanded as well. I left it looking a little dark.

Then Curves, to further build the middle tones, and I depressed the shadows and enhanced the highlights just a bit to add some contrast.

(I like to use both Levels and then Curves on underexposed images, because the software seems to work better making the two steps, and because Levels and Curves seem to work so differently.)

Next some USM, Amount 20%, Radius 50 pix, Threshold 0

I liked what the general tonality looked like at this point, and I liked the background, so I saved a copy, to preserve the background appearance.



I converted to CMYK colorspace, and applied 2 corrections in the Channel Mixer (I know it sounds weird, but it seemed to work for the fleshtones),





This is how it looked afterward:


At this point, I liked the fleshtones, but see how the background is affected?

So I converted back to RGB colorspace, and added the previous image, I had saved, into this session as a layer. Now I have the correct flashtones on the base layer, and the better background as a second layer.

I decided at this point, that I really needed to protect the best greens of the background image, as well as make transparent the majority of the face and outfit.

I used the Select Color Range to grab just those nebulous regions of nice bright green, and created a new Layer using "Layer via Copy". This new layer just has the green "patches", and then transparency for the rest of the canvas.

So now I have three layers, the base is the best fleshtones, the next layer up is the best background and the highest layer is just some green patches.

I applied some Gausian Blur, very lightly, to the green patches, to make them even more soft.

Next I chose the middle layer, and I used a large, round Eraser, and started to take away the girl's face and body, creating a mask. After that was pretty well done, I also removed some of the background, back to maybe a 50% transparency, taking care to feather around the girl.

Making all three layers visible, I could see the transformation dynamically, and know when I was finished.

Next I combined all three layers, and finally added just a tad more middle tone in Levels.

It all combined to make this:


I know this seems complicated, but if you take it step by step, it's not horrible.

Note: To prevent this sort of "color poisoning", it is usually advantageous to lay a white sheet, or white something, in front of the subject. I'm always forgetting this as well, so this is a reminder to myself as well.

Best,

ziggy53

ivar

I ran it through i2e, I was curious what it would do. I left it fully automated.

Corrected on the left, original right

Elaine

ziggy53 wrote:

I know this seems complicated, but if you take it step by step, it's not horrible.

Note: To prevent this sort of "color poisoning", it is usually advantageous to lay a white sheet, or white something, in front of the subject. I'm always forgetting this as well, so this is a reminder to myself as well.

Best,

ziggy53

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain your process. I'm sure I will re-read this many times. As far as I know, my PSE3 does not utilize curves, so I'll have to experiment. What software program are you using?

Regarding the sheet...do you mean laying a "white something" in front of the subject will help elliminate the weird color reflections, say from the grass? That sounds like a great idea and one I did not know of before. Thanks for the tip!

Elaine

Elaine

ivar wrote:

I ran it through i2e, I was curious what it would do. I left it fully automated.

That looks like a pretty good fix for an automated process! Thanks for showing this. I really liked your treatment of the picture from the first time I posted as well. I used your idea for the color replacement brush to reduce the green on the nose and I think it helped a lot. Thanks again!

Elaine