Please help me with this edit!

Mrs F

The mom of this senior loves this shot and I'm having a really hard time getting it to look good. Ack! I've even tried to get a good black and white conversion, but I'm not having any luck. Part of the problem is that this shot was bad SOOC. :help Any one care to take a stab at it? Here's my dismal attempt and the link to a large jpeg is here. Thanks in advance!
Kari

wholenewlight

I really don't think you need too much on this shot. White balance isn't toobad but the shot needs a little snap. Anyway, here's my take:


-curves
-slight color adjust
-crop the top a bit
-ever so slight "dodge on the face" using this tried & true method LINK

wholenewlight

And you mentioned that you tried a Black & White version?

Here's my take on a B&W:




I think you captured a special shot, BTW.

Mrs F

wholenewlight wrote:

And you mentioned that you tried a Black & White version?

I think you captured a special shot, BTW.

Thank you so much!! After looking at both of your edits, I can see that I was trying to punch everything up way too much. I really went overboard on yellow. I kept checking her CMYK values on her face and magenta was always so much higher than yellow. I had that problem with this whole shoot: her magenta values on her face were higher than yellow values (but not on other skin areas) in almost every image.

Thanks again!

Kari

VisualXpressions

can you give us a link to the original? might be able to do something with that... did you shoot it in raw or jpg mode?

It looks to me like it has a bad color cast (magenta) very promenant on the skin tones and with the highlights allready so bright it doesn't leave you much latitude for correction without blowing the bright areas.

might do better with the original...

nikos

something slightly different

Mrs F

VisualXpressions wrote:

can you give us a link to the original? might be able to do something with that... did you shoot it in raw or jpg mode?

It looks to me like it has a bad color cast (magenta) very promenant on the skin tones and with the highlights allready so bright it doesn't leave you much latitude for correction without blowing the bright areas.

Thank you so much! Here's the original. (Sorry if I linked it wrong the first time.) I shot this in raw with auto white balance. Can I post the raw file? I don't know how do it.

jfriend

Mrs F wrote:

The mom of this senior loves this shot and I'm having a really hard time getting it to look good. Ack! I've even tried to get a good black and white conversion, but I'm not having any luck. Part of the problem is that this shot was bad SOOC. :help Any one care to take a stab at it? Here's my dismal attempt and the link to a large jpeg is here. Thanks in advance!
Kari

This is a fun shot. It did seem like the skin tone was off a bit (too little yellow and a little too much cyan). Here's what I came up with:

• Curve to adjust blue channel (to increase yellow)
• Curve to adjust red channel (to decrease cyan)
• Curve to adjust overall brightness
• Selective color layer (to further adjust cyan in the reds alone)
• Sharpening

Mrs F

nikos wrote:

something slightly different

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort! I really appreciate it!

jfriend wrote:

• Curve to adjust blue channel (to increase yellow)
• Curve to adjust red channel (to decrease cyan)
• Curve to adjust overall brightness
• Selective color layer (to further adjust cyan in the reds alone)
• Sharpening

Wow, thank you! Can I assume when you did the selective color layer to "adjust" the cyan in the reds that you were further decreasing it? How far did you push it back? Did you only adjust her skin with masks or did you do global adjustments?

RogersDA

Here is my stab at this. Personally, too much at the bottom (the lower dog's ears don't do too much for this shot). Worked mostly in Lightroom and took some skin blemishes out in Photoshop.


Then there always some other effects you can add.

jfriend

Mrs F wrote:

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort! I really appreciate it!

Wow, thank you! Can I assume when you did the selective color layer to "adjust" the cyan in the reds that you were further decreasing it? How far did you push it back? Did you only adjust her skin with masks or did you do global adjustments?

All global corrections. No masks. Here's what I did:

Blue and Red Curves:



Brightness Curve:


Selective Color:


Layers Palette:


Plus some smart sharpening on the final result.

Mrs F

RogersDA wrote:

Here is my stab at this.

Thank you so much! You guys make this look so easy

jfriend wrote:

All global corrections. No masks. Here's what I did:

Thank you! A picture is worth a thousand words. When you originally said you adjusted the curve for brightness, I actually thought you lightened the image because her face seemed brighter, and I think it was an illusion caused by increasing the yellow and decreasing the cyan in her skin tones. Decreasing the brightness saved those highlights from getting blown in her hair and on the dog (like in my original edit).



Kari

jfriend

Mrs F wrote:

Thank you so much! You guys make this look so easy

Thank you! A picture is worth a thousand words. When you originally said you adjusted the curve for brightness, I actually thought you lightened the image because her face seemed brighter, and I think it was an illusion caused by increasing the yellow and decreasing the cyan in her skin tones. Decreasing the brightness saved those highlights from getting blown in her hair and on the dog (like in my original edit).

Kari

Raising the red curve and removing cyan from the reds in selective color both served to brighten the face. They also brightened the grass in the background which is why I ended up wanting to darken the overall image. The particular brightness curve I chose is designed to not darken her face (the upper part of the curve is pinned so it doesn't move much) while darkening the mid-tones and quarter-tones. This has the end-result of adding a little more contrast too through the mid-tones while keeping the luminosity of her face fairly constant. There are obviously many ways to do this - this is just what came to me first.

Travis

Here is another shot....:D



Original size is http://owney.smugmug.com/photos/216459753-O.jpg

BinaryFx

Kari, faces are not ideal targets for evaluating the common skintone ratio guidelines as they are not typical skintone areas (often can be flushed, have makeup etc). Just as shadows and other lighting can change things (just as babies and very young children often are more cyan/magenta than the 'ideal', which is often for a highly tanned adult and these numbers may make little sense for the subject at hand).


Regards,

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

Mrs F wrote:

Thank you so much!! After looking at both of your edits, I can see that I was trying to punch everything up way too much. I really went overboard on yellow. I kept checking her CMYK values on her face and magenta was always so much higher than yellow. I had that problem with this whole shoot: her magenta values on her face were higher than yellow values (but not on other skin areas) in almost every image.

Thanks again!

Kari

Mrs F

Travis wrote:

Here is another shot....:D

Wow Travis, this looks great too!

BinaryFx wrote:

Kari, faces are not ideal targets for evaluating the common skintone ratio guidelines as they are not typical skintone areas (often can be flushed, have makeup etc). Just as shadows and other lighting can change things (just as babies and very young children often are more cyan/magenta than the 'ideal', which is often for a highly tanned adult and these numbers may make little sense for the subject at hand).

Uh oh...now I'm confused. I always check my subjects face to see if Y>M. I've been trying to follow the SmugMug pleasing skin tutorial found here. If it's only the face that doesn't fit into the normal parameters, I still fix it with curves adjustments, then mask out the other skin. Should I just leave the face alone if the rest of the skin falls into the normal ranges?

Thanks,
Kari

jfriend

Mrs F wrote:

Wow Travis, this looks great too!




Uh oh...now I'm confused. I always check my subjects face to see if Y>M. I've been trying to follow the SmugMug pleasing skin tutorial found here. If it's only the face that doesn't fit into the normal parameters, I still fix it with curves adjustments, then mask out the other skin. Should I just leave the face alone if the rest of the skin falls into the normal ranges?

Thanks,
Kari

Face skin color generally follows the guidelines too for any subject that the guidelines apply to. I think what Stephen is saying is that you have to make sure you aren't sampling an area that is not regular skin color for whatever reason such as makeup or flushness due to cold or exercise - both of which can happen on the face.

But, my experience has been that as long as these exceptions are not in play, the face works as a sampling point. Often when subjects have long sleeve clothes on, this is all you get anyway and it's the most important place in the photo. I often try to avoid sampling the puffy part of the cheeks because that is often what gets flushed or gets makeup. The forehead, arms and neck are often safe choices.

BTW, you should be able to fix skin tone with global curves or other global color adjustments. You shouldn't need masks. The whole point of making the adjustments is to fix the overall color balance in the photo and you are just using skin tone as your most important reference point. So, unless you have non-uniform color lighting in the photo (e.g. different parts of the photo lit with different kinds of light like might happen on a stage), you should be able to make color corrections with global corrections and no masks. I did all my above corrections only with global moves and only by looking at the numbers on the skin and by eye for the rest of the photo.

BinaryFx

Mrs F wrote:

Wow Travis, this looks great too!
Uh oh...now I'm confused. I always check my subjects face to see if Y>M. I've been trying to follow the SmugMug pleasing skin tutorial found here. If it's only the face that doesn't fit into the normal parameters, I still fix it with curves adjustments, then mask out the other skin. Should I just leave the face alone if the rest of the skin falls into the normal ranges?

Thanks,
Kari

It depends Kari (subject, lighting etc)! Makeup will often lead to false evaluations, as will a flushed face etc. If the face is in shadow, but other areas are well lit, then one would have more cyan than ideal in the face, but not in the other areas etc. The ratios are simple guidelines only and require judgement in their application. Before colour monitor editing (or any graphical monitor display), drum scanner operators in prepress used these CMY ratios to set colour in the scanner. Today, with colour monitors and colour management one can take advantage of consistent good visual display of colour and also benefit from the historically proven method of 'by the numbers' evaluation/editing (today the numbers may be RGB, CMYK, LAB, HSB, Grayscale, each can be helpful for feedback).

I personally rarely if ever make selective adjustments for the face (unless the lighting is uneven etc). Different body parts will naturally have different brightness, hue and saturation variation within a single subject. By selective I mean selections or masks, I do often use blend if, blend modes and 'selective' commands such as hue/saturation or selective colour.

I try for the centre of a large area of 'average' skin if possible and sample more than one area, often three or four different skintone areas while adjusting with curves or whatever command may be in use for the correction. One may have to strike a balance between all sample points and what looks good on a trusted monitor display or print etc.

Global corrections usually take care of all tonal ranges and separate colour channels so there is little need for true selective moves on the face.


Sincerely,

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

Mrs F

jfriend wrote:

Face skin color generally follows the guidelines too for any subject that the guidelines apply to. I think what Stephen is saying is that you have to make sure you aren't sampling an area that is not regular skin color for whatever reason such as makeup or flushness due to cold or exercise - both of which can happen on the face...the forehead, arms and neck are often safe choices.

BinaryFx wrote:

The ratios are simple guidelines only and require judgement in their application...

Thank you jfriend and BinaryFx for the detailed explanations. I've been doing this wrong for a long time. You've given me a lot of great tips that will not only make my images better, but simplify my workflow.

(BTW, I received a new monitor and calibration equipment yesterday...this will also simplify my editing).


Kari

pyrtek

wxwax

That's a winner, Bernard.

Mrs F

wxwax wrote:

That's a winner, Bernard.

This is great, Bernard. Would you mind sharing the post processing secrets used for this image?

Many Thanks!
Kari

BinaryFx

Mrs F wrote:

Thank you jfriend and BinaryFx for the detailed explanations.
Kari

Kari, this may also help when you are evaluating skin:

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=477260&postcount=18

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=589939&postcount=76

The COLOR palette sliders in RGB, CMYK and LAB mode provide a "visual" guide to pleasing skin colour (other memory colours can sometimes have 'ideal' shapes/positions too). Notice how the old CMY numerical ratio of C/R to M/G to Y/B is reflected in the slider positions? Illustrated next to the LAB image are RGB/CMYK ghosted versions with "watch-hands" indicating the "time"...if you follow the metaphor.

More on memory colours here:

http://www.panix.com/%7Erbean/color/color4.txt


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

BinaryFx

pyrtek wrote:

__________________
Bernard
http://bertold.zenfolio.com

Bernard, I really like the retouching that you have done, particularly the eyes, they make the shot come to life!

Did you happen to use the new "Local Contrast" method that has recently been discussed on some other websites?

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?fs=true&docid=df7tj2cm_11ccskpm
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=25110884
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/colortheory/message/18726

I do notice a strange sort of "halo" that I dislike and would try to avoid.

But the contrast is good, if it can be blended better and or perhaps reduced a bit (down to personal taste for the viewer)


Sincerely,

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

pyrtek

BinaryFx wrote:

Bernard, I really like the retouching that you have done, particularly the eyes, they make the shot come to life!

Thanks.

BinaryFx wrote:

Did you happen to use the new "Local Contrast" method that has recently been discussed on some other websites?

I'll have a look at those, but all I did was paint over them with white on an
Overlay layer filled with 50% grey. I don't remember the opacity of the brush,
but I'm pretty sure it was in the region of 15 - 25%.

BinaryFx wrote:

I do notice a strange sort of "halo" that I dislike and would try to avoid.

Yeah, that's a very hastily done vignette, if you could call it that. Very easily
avoided.

pyrtek

Mrs F wrote:

This is great, Bernard. Would you mind sharing the post processing secrets used for this image?

Thanks. Not very many secrets. The eyes I explained in my reply to Stephen.
The color correction was done with a curves adjustment layer (I raised the R
curve very slightly and lowered the B curve a little bit to give warmth to the
image). Then I did a levels adjustment. The levels layer was in Luminosity
blending mode (so it doesn't affect the color, just the brightness and contrast).
I'm not sure if you know this trick, or not, but in the levels adjustment layer if
you hold down Alt while dragging either the white triangle or the black triangle
to set the white/black point you'll get a threshold view of the image. I did this
while dragging the white point until her face started to show up, ignoring the
rest of the image. As soon as I saw her face I clicked OK. This caused a lot of
the image to blow out, though, so I masked out everything except her face
and I think her top from this correction. Next, I made the grass a bit greener
with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. I targeted the yellows and changed
the hue very slightly (to the right) to make the grass less yellow and more
green. I masked out the girl from this adjustment, of course. Finally, a slightly
controversial edit - I used a surface blur on her face at a very low opacity to
smooth out her complexion. Personally, I think she's beautiful and doesn't
need that kind of treatment, but I know from experience that women like that
sort of thing. I finished with the vignette, which could have been better.

EDIT: Oh, one other thing. I think the halo Stephen mentioned wasn't the
vignette, after all, but the slight blurring around the girl's head, especially
visible on the left (our left). This is caused by an exceptionally hackish cloning
out of the strands of hair that I found really distracting in the original. It can
be done better easily, but I hope the idea gets across anyway.

EDIT 2: Forgot to mention the crop, but that was obvious. I cropped the dog's
head at the bottom and the white stripe at the top.

Scott_Quier

Mrs. F,

I'm a little late coming to the game, but I thought I would throw my hat in the ring.
This is your original image (thanks for making the originals available)


This is what I got out of it (color version)


And this is the B&W version (a little sepia thrown in, just for grins).


Here's what I did:

• Once I got the Original JPG, I opened it in ACR to set the WB, to stretch the histogram, reset the exposure a touch (it was a touch over exposed), and add just a touch of "Clarity" to the image.
• Once in PS, a little healing brush to remove the worst of the skin problems. This is an area where I'm not so good...
• Crop
• Using a Levels adjustment layer, mask the eyes and lighten them a touch.
• Flatten
• Add a muted catchlights to the eyes as well.
• Color Balance layer to get the skin tones more in line. The face is still a little magenta, and the hands a little yellow, I struck a balance that I think works.
• Curves - put a little "S" curve on the photo to add some contrast
• Activate the background layer
• Select the lasso tool, setting the feathering to 250, draw a rough oval around the girl and part of the dog. Move that selection until it looks right.
• Invert the selection, Copy, Paste -> gets a new layer with only the area outside the selection. Adjust this new layer with Levels (Ctrl-L), drag the middle slider to approx .8
• Save the PSD
• Flatten
• USM (100, .8, 3)
• Change mode to 8-bit and save the jpg
• Open the saved PSD (or move the history back to where it was flattened, but before the USM.
• Apply the "Greg Gorman" B&W conversion action (you can get it here)
• Change the generated color fill layer to (175, 50, 0) and the opacity to a very low level - don't remember what it was
• Adjust the other generated layers to pleasing levels - I tend to like fairly high contrast in my B&W/duotones.
• Flatten and save the JPG

Edit: Click on the either of the last two images for the uploaded originals (should you want them).

Mrs F

Thanks for the help with the fix and the detailed explanation, Scott.

I really like contrasty duotones too and I've never tried the Greg Gorman method so that will be a fun action to play with on my images.

Kari