DPChallenge: A Digital Photography Contest You are not logged in. (log in or register) 
 

DPChallenge Forums >> Individual Photograph Discussion >> Practicing my post processing; CC appreciated.
Pages:  
Showing posts 1 - 13 of 13, (reverse)
AuthorThread
 03/08/2005 12:00:55 AM · #1
After taking Lynda.com's 13 hour tutorial "Photoshop CS for Digital Photographers", I practiced all of my new skills on this photo of myself. My husband took this shot of me during a maternity session when I was 9 months pregnant. When I first saw the shot, I liked it very much, but as I learn more and more I began to see lots of area for improvement. The post processing is my effort to combine the photoshop skills I've acquired.

BEFORE:


AFTER:


PP includes lightening the image; enhancing the eyes, lips, brows; diminishing shadows on the face; bringing out the highlights in the hair; softening the skin; enahancing contast in the image.

It was a good exercise for me. It was my first time making all edits on layers without damaging the actual pixels of the image itself. I saved the PSD with all layers in tact and detailed notes about the steps taken in each layer. If anyone is interested, PM me and I can make it available for download.

I am VERY VERY interested in feedback. If you think I overdid something or didn't push the envelope far enough, I would really like to know. My only pre-emptive strike is to say that my personal preference is to avoid the plastic looking skin that removes all texture. That said, if you think it would benefir from additional softening without losing texture, please say so.

Thanks in advance. I look forward to constructive feedback.

:), Dawn
 03/08/2005 02:36:23 AM · #2
Wow, great work. Love how well you can see the eyes now. Beuatiful.
 03/08/2005 03:09:04 AM · #3
Your edits look really good, Dawn. My biggest concern is that it looks like lightening the hair has caused some noise to appear there. It's hard to tell on the resized photo, so you might want to check it at full size. Other than that, it looks great! And congrats on the impending baby. :-)
 03/08/2005 03:19:08 AM · #4
Hope you did not mind Dawn but I wanted to see what I could do with the before picture. Here it is let me know if you like it. I am learning PS skills and just had to give it a try.


BTW: your before and after shots look great.
 03/08/2005 04:01:20 AM · #5
it looks very good
but I think you have gone to far with the eyes they seem too bright now
all the other levels and sharpness are spot on
I think an eye brightness somewhere between SDW65's edit and your edit would look better

just my 2 cents worth :)
 03/08/2005 04:36:44 AM · #6
Like firsty says, the eyes are unnaturally bright in your reworking of the image. The rest is very nice. SDW's softening of the picture is quite nice if you like that sort of thing, but the eyes there need to be brightened a little I think.

Robt.
 03/08/2005 06:29:03 AM · #7
I, for one, love what you've done.

If you wanted to follow the advice of others and darken the eyes just a bit, that would be fine. But I love the eyes just the way they are. They are the first thing I look at in the picture and that, for me, means it's working. :-)

You should hang this one on the wall, I think you've got an image to be proud of!

03/08/2005 09:51:12 AM · #8
The change is remarkable. I'm sure that you're both happy with the loveliness of the original photo and with the dynamics of the edited one.

After some time (which might never end), you'll get some feeling for how much and where to apply certain techniques. This is certaily a good start.

My own feeling is that (with Bear) the eyes are too dominant, and that the contrast doesn't need that much work.

How was the baby?
 03/08/2005 10:53:28 AM · #9
Thanks for all of the replies, especially as regards the eyes. That was the foremost question I had, but didn't want to ask directly because I didn't want to put ideas in to your heads that hadn't already been there. One moment I look at it and love how my attention snaps right to the eyes, but the next time I look at it I wonder if it's obvious PSing. I didn't brighten them separately from the image or add additional contrast to just the eyes (though I did sharpen them a bit separately.) The curves main adjustment brought the eyes up with the rest of the image, but I may play with masking the eyes off in that adj and adding a second curves layer that masks everything but the eyes and doesn't go as far. I'm glad that some people like the eyes and some don't - that say to me that it really is a subjective thing with the levels and not and all out overdone thing.

Philip, you may be right on the hair. I'm going to take a look at that in the full res photo and if necessary add some gaussian blur there. (PS - The baby made her arrival 9 mo ago. And she is every bit a joy!)

Scott - Good work, I like the moodiness of your adjustment. The only part I'm not particularly fond of is what seems to be a shadow in front of the arms/chest area. Not sure if you added that or if the post processing just darkened what may have been there.

David - thanks again for your compliment and encouragement!

Koriyama - Thank you. Yes, judging when to apply the techniqies is probably a bigger challenge than learning how to do them. One thing that struck me during the tutorials were that he always started with images that I thought looked great and didn't need any work. But by the end, he always managed to pull a wow out of what had previously been nice, but ordinary. I hope to develop the eye for when there is a hidden wow. Of course, I hope to develop the caera skill to create in-camera wow as well, but I don't think they are conflicting goals.

:) Thanks to all for looking and commenting!

03/08/2005 11:12:02 AM · #10
I admit I really like the eyes. I don't think they are too much either. I'd keep them the way they are. They are a great focal point of the picture.
 03/08/2005 11:58:28 AM · #11
Hi JM,

I spent much of yesterday honing my photoship skills as well, and so I had to check your post.

Nice image. I like it a lot.

Here are my initial observations. I like the tonality, its very even and flattering. The overall color seemed too red, thought, even for you :), so I thought that could be toned down a bit. And although its not a big deal, the dividing line of wall was a distration. Also, I thought your eyes were just fine.

So I tried these hasty changes, hope you don't mind.

03/08/2005 12:07:28 PM · #12
Originally posted by mcmurma:
Hi JM,

I spent much of yesterday honing my photoship skills as well, and so I had to check your post.

Nice image. I like it a lot.

Here are my initial observations. I like the tonality, its very even and flattering. The overall color seemed too red, thought, even for you :), so I thought that could be toned down a bit. And although its not a big deal, the dividing line of wall was a distraction. Also, I thought your eyes were just fine.

So I tried these hasty changes, hope you don't mind.



Oops, forgot to post what I did.

Adjusted levels to the right and left edges, then pushed the center slider to the left (1.25 or so). This lightens the image quite a bit. Then used SAturation to about +25 to get back some color, then reduced the RED only by about -15.

Hastily cleaned that line with the clone stamp set to varying degrees of opacity. (There has to be a better way!)

Selected the eyes and the surrounding area and did a local contrast adjustment with USM at 20, 50, and 6.

Selected the hair and did a curves adjustment by lightening it a bit, this also gave it more red color.

Sharpened whole image with 200, .2, and 0.
 03/09/2005 12:23:00 AM · #13
Nathan - Thanks.

Michael - Thanks for taking the time to play and share! Actually you've hit upon another of the things I was uncertain about. I did boost the magentas a bit in a color balance layer because the original seemed to have a green color cast (probably reflection from that green wall). I'm still seeing the green cast in yours as well. I think the red is a bit much as you point out, but I thought if it had to go red or green that red seemed a more natural skin tone. I haven't been able to adequately get rid of the green cast without introducing reds. BTW, you're in my hubby's favorites list:
//www.dpchallenge.com/profile.php?USER_ID=82

Thanks for all of the helpful feedback. I've revisited the images a number of times in PS since starting this thread and have enjoyed working with the suggestions to see different results. This part is a little harder for me. Going from the original to where I have it was definitely improving it (with the debatable exception of the eyes), and now we linger on that fine line of personal preference. Sounds easy enough, except I don't think I've defined mine yet. So, not knowing my personal preference makes all the tweaks look good to me in both before and after state and makes my head throb. I think I've moved from the mechanics phase of pp to the art phase. It's considerably harder! :)

Pages:  
Current Server Time: 09/17/2025 07:25:55 PM

Please log in or register to post to the forums.


Home - Challenges - Community - League - Photos - Cameras - Lenses - Learn - Help - Terms of Use - Privacy - Top ^
DPChallenge, and website content and design, Copyright © 2001-2025 Challenging Technologies, LLC.
All digital photo copyrights belong to the photographers and may not be used without permission.
Current Server Time: 09/17/2025 07:25:55 PM EDT.