Need Help with Processing

Bassett1976 · July 16, 2008

I'm not very good at post processing and need some extra help/work on the subject. Here is a picture that I took this morning and have changed some of the levels in Photoshop Elements 5.0. I was hoping to get some feedback on the pictures to get some help to make them look better (and thus learn).

Thanks!

#1 Original Pictures (only rotated the picture)

#2 Modification with the Healing brush tool and color levels (mostly red)

#3 Modification with the color levels

wholenewlight · July 16, 2008

Everyone will have their own opinion but I played with your middle shot and here's my effort:

I like softness with babies and even a little bit high-key:
- played with levels
- used clone tool to remove color splotches
- reduced color saturation
- applied a bit of vignette to keep from blowing out the highlight background too bad
- shot was too yellow/green, color balance change toward magenta plus a bit of blue
- gaussian blur layer

Bassett1976 · July 16, 2008

wholenewlight wrote:

Everyone will have their own opinion but I played with your middle shot and here's my effort:

I like softness with babies and even a little bit high-key:
- played with levels
- used clone tool to remove color splotches
- reduced color saturation
- applied a bit of vignette to keep from blowing out the highlight background too bad
- shot was too yellow/green, color balance change toward magenta plus a bit of blue
- gaussian blur layer

Thank you wholenewlight.

That does look better. I guess I just need to get into elements and play around with it a lot until I know what I'm doing.

Thanks!

pathfinder · July 16, 2008

Baldy has posted several times about how some digital cameras emphasize the red/magenta tones in some folks faces, because silicon sensors are more sensitive to IR than film is. Apparently some Canon lenses pass more IR then needed, which never registered on film, but is captured on silicon.

Smugmug has a tutorial about how to handle this redness here - http://www.smugmug.com/help/red-skin-tones

Bassett, when you say you want to make them look "better" - do you mean more accurate, or more attractive, or more artistically recalled, or what exactly?

This image looks, to my eye, what many newborns look like for the first few hours or days.

I downloaded your image, and selected the red tones with Select >Color Range>Reds and then modified the selection with a bur of a few pixels. I then used Image Adjust>Photo Filter >Green at about 40 or 50% on the selected area ( green kills magenta nicely ) and the selection limited the green filter to the reddest areas. I did this filter on an adjustment layer so that I could adjust the opacity ( amount ) to taste. I also ran a Surface Blur to help soften the blotchy redness still left, and did a bit of local contrast enhancement with USM at about 20%, 50 pixels, 4 threshold.
This is my result with the small file you had at the beginning of this thread.

My goal was not to eliminate all the red blotchyness, but to tone it down and smooth out the skin a bit. It will be hard to make this image a great fine art print, but I think my edit will make it a little less harsh. I coudl have hit the Surface blur a bit harder with a larger file, I had to be careful here or I would loose detail ( which was not much to begin with ) around the eyes.

Do you feel this is better, or worse?

The CMY pixel values are appropriate skin tones, reading in the neighborhood of 16,43,47 on the left side of the face and forehead. The infants right cheek is still too red, but is probably an accurate rendition of its appearance also. Typical CMYK recommended skintone numbers tend to be for tanned Caucasians, not light skinned newborns.

I do not use PS Elements, so you may have to translate this a bit.....

Bassett1976 · July 16, 2008

pathfinder wrote:

Baldy has posted several times about how some digital cameras emphasize the red/magenta tones in some folks faces, because silicon sensors are more sensitive to IR than film is. Apparently some Canon lenses pass more IR then needed, which never registered on film, but is captured on silicon.

Smugmug has a tutorial about how to handle this redness here - http://www.smugmug.com/help/red-skin-tones

Bassett, when you say you want to make them look "better" - do you mean more accurate, or more attractive, or more artistically recalled, or what exactly?

This image looks, to my eye, what many newborns look like for the first few hours or days.

I downloaded your image, and selected the red tones with Select >Color Range>Reds and then modified the selection with a bur of a few pixels. I then used Image Adjust>Photo Filter >Green at about 40 or 50% on the selected area ( green kills magenta nicely ) and the selection limited the green filter to the reddest areas. I did this filter on an adjustment layer so that I could adjust the opacity ( amount ) to taste. I also ran a Surface Blur to help soften the blotchy redness still left, and did a bit of local contrast enhancement with USM at about 20%, 50 pixels, 4 threshold.
This is my result with the small file you had at the beginning of this thread.

My goal was not to eliminate all the red blotchyness, but to tone it down and smooth out the skin a bit. It will be hard to make this image a great fine art print, but I think my edit will make it a little less harsh. I coudl have hit the Surface blur a bit harder with a larger file, I had to be careful here or I would loose detail ( which was not much to begin with ) around the eyes.

Do you feel this is better, or worse?

The CMY pixel values are appropriate skin tones, reading in the neighborhood of 16,43,47 on the left side of the face and forehead. The infants right cheek is still too red, but is probably an accurate rendition of its appearance also. Typical CMYK recommended skintone numbers tend to be for tanned Caucasians, not light skinned newborns.

I do not use PS Elements, so you may have to translate this a bit.....

Thank you pathfinder,

It's helpful to see how people process their images. I know the blotchy part looks bad but not sure how to try and fix it. I wish that my boy was having a good skin day but today is not so good. In a few more days/weeks it might all be different and I get a better picture.

I submitted my photo here so that I could learn about post processing. I am more of a show me how and I can learn type of person. I took an online Elements class a year or so ago and they "told" me how to do a lot of things but I never got into the habit of practicing and learning. I guess this is where a local community college class may come in handy right about now. I also know that I lack in the "engineering" background for processing (engineering for lack of terms). I do not have the knowledge of knowing what is wrong with a picture before starting and the things that I try and correct it with (lighting, shadows or contrast) just seem to make it worst.

Thank you for your time and input. I have learned something today and I'm really excited about it.

BinaryFx · July 16, 2008

My initial thought from simply browsing the page is:

I am rather partial to black and whites for newborn/early child photos - even if they have no "processing hurdles" (which going black and white avoids [cheats?]).

When I have time I will give it a look in Photoshop.

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

ziggy53 · July 16, 2008

Here's my take of the image. I used probably 8 different masks built from color selections and then each was adjusted for Hue and Lightness using mostly Red and a little Yellow channels. Blemishes were handled with Clone and Healing Brush. A final smoothing with Neat Image to handle a little "roughness".

I left the skin fairly reddish.

I painted out the lower glint in the eyes because it just didn't look right.

As usual, I will delete if you wish.

P.S. I suggest painting out the dark corner to make it white. It draws a little too much attention as is IMO.

Need Help with Processing

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