My beautiful daughter......overexposed? Recover detail.

ShannonHeat

I need a little help with these. I took these of my 4 year old daughter last night before her dance class, and they look great on my computer. However, my sister said they looked washed out on her computer. Do I just suck at b&w conversions? Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.....I can always count on great feedback on here!

www.heatonphotography.net

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wxwax

No piccie, Shannon.

mmroden

Is the goal to make the dress disappear? Just with floating head, arms, and feet?

ShannonHeat

No, not really. But if I drop the shadows too low, the black backdrop looks a little too light. Hmmmm....wondering what I did wrong. Are you seeing this too dark? My sister said that the pic looks overexposed. Heeellllpppp!!!!!

mmroden wrote:

Is the goal to make the dress disappear? Just with floating head, arms, and feet?

z_28

Main problem is that you compressed pictures extremely !!!
Last one is 12.5 kB ONLY ?!
First one is even 9.5 kB !
It's basically size and quality of avatar.

Elaine

I like her expression in the first one, and it's cute to have her feet kicked up like that.

I wonder if you posted a pre-conversion photo if it would be easier to tell what's happening. What's your light source for these?

Elaine

ShannonHeat

I'll repost in a sec., with the original pics. You can view on my website www.heatonphotography.net under Youth and Sports.
I don't have a studio or anything. These were done in her bedroom with a black bedsheet, and a flood lamp I had to be creative...lol.
What do I do to make these look right?

Elaine wrote:

I like her expression in the first one, and it's cute to have her feet kicked up like that.

I wonder if you posted a pre-conversion photo if it would be easier to tell what's happening. What's your light source for these?

Elaine

wxwax

What software do you have?

I'm going to move this to the Finishing School forum, that's where we can have a good discussion about ways to help the shots (which I think is entirely doable.)

ShannonHeat

I have cs2. Oh, and feel free to move my thread, but plese don't abandon it....I need help

wxwax wrote:

What software do you have?

I'm going to move this to the Finishing School forum, that's where we can have a good discussion about ways to help the shots (which I think is entirely doable.)

z_28

You should made them 100 kB each at least.

BTW - on your website they are very low resolution too, same thing as here.


P.S. Looks as your pictures grow a bit
About 3x bit !
Didn't they looks better now ?

ShannonHeat

Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong?

z_28 wrote:

You should made them 100 kB each at least.

BTW - on your website they are very low resolution too, same thing as here.


P.S. Looks as your pictures grow a bit
About 3x bit !
Didn't they looks better now ?

BinaryFx

Shannon, learn to look at and trust your info palette readings! Think of it as a profiling spyder for your image, people spend big money calibrating and characterising/profiling their monitors, but seem shy to measure their images values. My advice is to take advantage of all the methods available.


Regards,

Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

Elaine

Shannon,

I would still be interested in seeing the original pic. That way, people may be able to give you some pointers on improving the shot at the time it was taken. Actually that part should probably go in the Technique forum.

If you do make a larger size or original pic available in this forum, then you could ask people to give it a go and share what they did with it.

Don't want you to get discouraged!

Elaine

mmroden

Shannon,

I second the not-getting-frustrated sentiment. Some of these concepts are a real pain, and they're not going to come immediately. That you have CS2 is a good thing, because you've got a very sophisticated tool there to do what you need to do.

The closer we get to the original image, the more we can help you. We'll also need to know the goal; I'm guessing it's not the floating limbs I'm seeing now; that goal should come into sharper focus (har har) once we see your originals.

And as for your friend, one of the most frustrating things about this entire process is color calibration of monitors. What may look awesome to you on your monitor may look terrible on hers because one or the both of you may have very old or very miscalibrated monitors and not even realize it. I can only recommend a good color puck (like Gretag Macbeth's Eye One) for that.

ShannonHeat

How do I put the original image into this forum? I shot raw. Oh, and I don't use smugmug yet :cry Need the cashflow first.

Shannon

Elaine wrote:

Shannon,

I would still be interested in seeing the original pic. That way, people may be able to give you some pointers on improving the shot at the time it was taken. Actually that part should probably go in the Technique forum.

If you do make a larger size or original pic available in this forum, then you could ask people to give it a go and share what they did with it.

Don't want you to get discouraged!

Elaine

nikos

ShannonHeat wrote:

How do I put the original image into this forum? I shot raw. Oh, and I don't use smugmug yet :cry Need the cashflow first.

Shannon

Save a jpeg from the original RAW file onto your server and post the link here. It makes it easier for us to work on an unedited, higher resolution image.

Nikos