Since I'm addressing both photos, I'm doing it here rather than on the photos - you can paste any comments you want to onto the photos. Keep in mind that this is all opinion.
In the first one: I like the idea, but there's a few 'nits' I'd like to point out. First off, the crop feels a little tight to me - the edges of her eyebrows and eye lashes are cut off; to me it could be 'opened up' a little and still be effective as intended. Skin tones are good - she's got a nice golden glow about her which comes across as her being very healthy and vibrant. Going back to the eyes - the blues are phenomenal; there's a feeling of a lot of depth to them. Unfortunately the whites of the eyes aren't white (at least on my screen). She looks as though she's been swimming in a chlorinated pool or in salt water. Would recommend either dodging to lighten the whites or reshoot and remember to use Visine (or other eye drops). You could perhaps try a mild desat of the red channel (though it may affect the skin tone). Overall, the photo is good, with the potential to be really really cool.
In the second photo: Aside from the crop (mentioned above), your desat needs a little work. The grays in the skin are overpowering the blue in her eyes. I'm not familiar with the Photoshop terms (I use the GIMP), but when you desat the yellow and red channels, you can lighten the intensity of them, and this might help the gray in the skin areas to not overpower her eyes. Also, instead of relying on a simple color channel desat to convert the image, I believe it's possible in Photoshop to select multiple areas, invert your selections, and desat the rest, leaving your originally selected areas untouched, and thus at their original intensities. This method should give you a 'cleaner' look around her irises and retaining all of the blues, which I suspect was what you were aiming for.
On both photos, the cyan/turquoise of the scarf is eye-popping and almost looks oversaturated, which may have been intentional. If I were you (and I know I'm not) I would try a very mild reduction in saturation of just the scarf (by selecting the scarf and then reducing the saturation in the selection only) just to see how it would affect the overall look of the photo.
Of the two photos, I like the full color image best, but I think this is because in the 2nd image the gray is so overpowering.
Hope some of this helps, and keep in mind that you are the final judge of whether or not the photo 'works'.
Sara |
