Help with PP on image

W00DY

Hi All,

We went to a show today and my wife took this image of our son after coming down a huge slide...



The camera (D70) was just on Auto and I have made some very simple adjustments in Aperture (sharpening, White Balance & Exposure)



What I would like to know is how (if it can be) can the image be improved? I am trying to learn more about PP so if you can explain what you did that would be great.

The other thing is the final image does not look as good on SmugMug as it does in Aperture or as our desktop? Is this due to something I am doing when exporting from Aperture?

Cheers,
W00DY

peterst6906

I think you've done a reasonable job on the PPing yourself, but the image still has a couple of problems to my eye. The main thing I see is that it has a bit of a yellow cast and the neutrals aren't quite neutral.

In the following pic, I did the following, very quickly (less than 1 minute) from the original picture:

1. identified the colours that should be neutral and used curves to make them
- black point in shadow under slide at right
- white point on top of sock

2. The top of the skin still looked slightly yellow to me (the bottom is receiving a reflection off the slide, so I think it looks fine being slightly yellow). So I aplied curves again and added a slight amount of red using a point on the leg.

3. Applied an S-Curve in the area through the middle where most colors on the boy sit.

4. sharpened and output.

In relation to the color issue, are you shooting and precessing in Adobe RGB? If so, then before your final save for the web, you need to convert to sRGB, otherwise the colors will look flat and less saturated in a browser (except Safari, which is color aware if setup correctly).

Regards,

Peter

wxwax

Skin tone is way off, that's the single biggest issue.

We have a tutorial here that you might find useful.

DRabbit

Hey Woody,

You want to get the whites white, and have his skin not be too green or magenta in color. Start with levels, even if you have to tweak and fade them along the way.

First, I started with your processed version already (not the original)
I did auto levels...
then hue - yellow only - adjust so background was more yellow than green
then hue - reds only - adjust hue slidier up a hair to make the skin tone less red - adjust the saturation a hair down
then brightness and contrast to taste - broad setting on whole image - then selective on the boy only (used a feathered mask)
then dodged the highlighted areas of hit face and arms just a little bit.

Took about five minutes... not perfect, but if you start with the full size and just tweak a bit you can get it right. Always watch the color casting in the highlights and shadows. If you can't see them (which happens after you've been staring too long) use the eyedropper tool to test color areas.

Classic shot by the way! He was having so much fun!

peterst6906

wxwax wrote:

Skin tone is way off, that's the single biggest issue.

We have a tutorial here that you might find useful.

Just a question about the tutorial in this situation.

The way I see it in this image, the skin is not independent of the environment and is hugely affect by reflection of yellow off the surface of the slide. That should make the skin more yellow than normal (my conversion was dismal at accounting for this), so the final image is going to be different to the normal skin colors, unless you take the view that our mind disregards that and only sess it as normal anyway.

If the second situation is true, then applying global adjustments will then affect the environment won't they.

I like the second attempt better than my first attempt to help, but now I think the skin is a little too blue, especially on top and this has resulted from reducing the yellow underneath (It's almost grey on top of the left arm).

Thoughts?

Regards,

Peter

KrazyKevin

Peter, I agree with you. I don't know how others view this situation, but I like my pictures to look exactly how I remembered them when I took the picture. Unless of course its a portrait or pic of someone that is wanting it to look a certain way. In this case only you remember how this pic looked. I'm curious to what color yellow the slide was. Was it a bright yellow or a darker yellow? But it looks like there could be a yellow cast on the boys skin from the slide. And, if thats how you remember it, then thats how it should be!

W00DY

peterst6906 wrote:

1. identified the colours that should be neutral and used curves to make them
- black point in shadow under slide at right
- white point on top of sock

It sounds like you may be working in Photoshop, I am working in Aperture so I was wondering if setting the white Balance (were you have to choose a white part of the image) is the same as setting the white point?

peterst6906 wrote:

2. The top of the skin still looked slightly yellow to me (the bottom is receiving a reflection off the slide, so I think it looks fine being slightly yellow). So I aplied curves again and added a slight amount of red using a point on the leg.

3. Applied an S-Curve in the area through the middle where most colors on the boy sit.

Is there anyway to do curves and S-Curves in Aperture?

peterst6906 wrote:

In relation to the color issue, are you shooting and precessing in Adobe RGB? If so, then before your final save for the web, you need to convert to sRGB, otherwise the colors will look flat and less saturated in a browser (except Safari, which is color aware if setup correctly).

I am shooting in sRGB. I am not sure if Aperture changes the setting when imported (how do I check?). Also you said "if Safari is setup correctly", where are the colour settings for Safari? I looked in Preferences but could not see any relevant settings?

Appreciate your comments.

Cheers,
W00DY

W00DY

wxwax wrote:

Skin tone is way off, that's the single biggest issue.

We have a tutorial here that you might find useful.

Thanks for the link, I will give this a go and see how it turns out.

W00DY

KrazyKevin wrote:

Peter, I agree with you. I don't know how others view this situation, but I like my pictures to look exactly how I remembered them when I took the picture. Unless of course its a portrait or pic of someone that is wanting it to look a certain way. In this case only you remember how this pic looked. I'm curious to what color yellow the slide was. Was it a bright yellow or a darker yellow? But it looks like there could be a yellow cast on the boys skin from the slide. And, if thats how you remember it, then thats how it should be!

Hi Kevin,

I also like my images as natural as possible (in most cases) the slide was a bright yellow, in my edited version I think the slide is still a little dark, it was probably brighter than that. So yes, I think Kobi's skin would be a little yellower than normal due to reflection.

Cheers,
W00DY

W00DY

wxwax wrote:

Skin tone is way off, that's the single biggest issue.

We have a tutorial here that you might find useful.

Is there a tutorial which shows how to do this in Aperture?

Cheers,
W00DY