Please help me prepare images for large prints

W00DY

Hi Photoshop gurus...

I am after a huge favour. I have the chance to get 2 24x30'' Lustre Prints for free and I want to make sure that the prints I get are the best possible.

I have 2 prints in mind both taken on a D70 in RAW format.

The Favour - Would someone who is good at touching up photos be willing to help with the PP of these 2 images so they turn out great? I don't need any major surgery on them but I think the colour would need to be fixed up (skin tones etc...) and maybe some bruises cloned of their faces (kids!!!)

Anyway if anyone could spare an hour or so please PM me and I can email you the full resolution images. Oh they would also need to be scaled up (see this post in another forum - Getting image ready for print

Very much appreciate anyone who can help. :clap :clap :clap

Cheers,
W00DY

rutt

Hey, Woody, instead of asking for free labor like this, what about posting the images and asking for help in learning how to do it yourself? If one of us does it with you for free off line, nobody really benefits, except your prints look better. If we do it here, others will be able to see what went into it and there is a chance that we might all learn from each other.

If you need help hosting the images (both jpg and raw) PM me and I can help.

W00DY wrote:

Hi Photoshop gurus...

I am after a huge favour. I have the chance to get 2 24x30'' Lustre Prints for free and I want to make sure that the prints I get are the best possible.

I have 2 prints in mind both taken on a D70 in RAW format.

The Favour - Would someone who is good at touching up photos be willing to help with the PP of these 2 images so they turn out great? I don't need any major surgery on them but I think the colour would need to be fixed up (skin tones etc...) and maybe some bruises cloned of their faces (kids!!!)

Anyway if anyone could spare an hour or so please PM me and I can email you the full resolution images. Oh they would also need to be scaled up (see this post in another forum - Getting image ready for print

Very much appreciate anyone who can help.

Cheers,
W00DY

W00DY

rutt wrote:

Hey, Woody, instead of asking for free labor like this, what about posting the images and asking for help in learning how to do it yourself? If one of us does it with you for free off line, nobody really benefits, except your prints look better. If we do it here, others will be able to see what went into it and there is a chance that we might all learn from each other.

If you need help hosting the images (both jpg and raw) PM me and I can help.

Hi Rutt,

I am all for everyone learning and sorry i didn't mean to ask for "free labour"...

The reason why I said PM me was because I was not sure if I should post or host in smugmug a full sized image, plus i thought it would have been better if someone was working on the RAW file rather than a JPEG.

The offer for the 2 prints is only valid for one week so I thought taking it out of the forum would have been better. I would love to learn how to do it myself but I guess when you get a good offer liek this I wanted to get the best prints possible, they are just of my kids so not very interesting for most people on here.

Anyway if anyone would like to help me out I would be much appreciative.

Cheers,
W00DY

rutt

Woody's original (left) and my edit (right). Full sized here and here.

1. A little RGB Luminosity blending. Started with the green channel and darkend with the red channel, 40%.
2. Man From Mars curves in LAB.
3. 3-Channel HIRALOAM sharpening with lighten 50% of darken

Details: Here are the MFM curves I used:



With these blending otions:



Notice that I have used 18% oacity AND pulled in the light slide of the topmost blend-if slider to avoid blowing the highlights on the water.

Here are the USM values I used at first:



Notice I did this on a layer in LAB with all three channels selected (contrary to popular wisdom). Then moved to RGB, duplicated the USM layer, changed the blending mode of one USM layer to darken and the the other to lighten. Cut the opacity of the lighten layer to 50% and merged the two USM layers. Then I played with the opacity of the merged layer a bit, maybe cut to 50%.

jfriend

I like everything in the result except the skin tone. It looks like it's gone to an orange color, particularly in the hands. The CMYK values for the skin tone show more than 2x Yellow vs. Magenta and extremely low Cyan. The values from before your changes are more in the expected range.

Is there some way (without a mask) to protect the skin color from the MFM color enhancers?

W00DY

rutt wrote:

Woody's original (left) and my edit (right). Full sized here and here.

1. A little RGB Luminosity blending. Started with the green channel and darkend with the red channel, 40%.
2. Man From Mars curves in LAB.
3. 3-Channel HIRALOAM sharpening with lighten 50% of darken

Details: Here are the MFM curves I used:



With these blending otions:



Notice that I have used 18% oacity AND pulled in the light slide of the topmost blend-if slider to avoid blowing the highlights on the water.

Here are the USM values I used at first:



Notice I did this on a layer in LAB with all three channels selected (contrary to popular wisdom). Then moved to RGB, duplicated the USM layer, changed the blending mode of one USM layer to darken and the the other to lighten. Cut the opacity of the lighten layer to 50% and merged the two USM layers. Then I played with the opacity of the merged layer a bit, maybe cut to 50%.

Hey Rutt,

Thanks heaps for giving this a go. I agree with John though the skin tones are very yellow, this could be more becouse my boy is very pale so it looks wierd (to us) seeing him so tanned

In saying that though the rest of the image is awesome, I'll give some of your techniques a go and see what I come up with.