Am I getting Better?

[justin_schnee]

<p>I posted a few photos of my daughter a few days back and got some negative feedback such as lighting, exposure and posing issues. Now Im back for more. If you see my last post, am I moving in the right direction? Also please critique these with brutal honesty.</p>

<p>http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/2761/stevie2.jpg</p>

<p>http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9141/stevie1.jpg</p>

<p> </p>

[dcstep]

<p>You're using artificial light, but you didn't bother to move around so that those cars would be out of the frame. When you look through the lens, notice the background. No amount of bokeh will disguise those cars.</p>

<p>I suspect that her real skin tone is closer to the first image, but I don't know, you'll have to tell us.</p>

[justin_schnee]

<p>I didnt even think of that at the time of shooting. Thanks for the tip. The first shot is a little warmed up and her skin tone is spot on in the second image stevie1.jpg second shot is pretty much straight out of camera after a little contrast enhancement via curves. the second i felt a little warmth added a little bit to the shot, but i see what ur getting at about the skin tones,<br>

"try to recreate her natural skin tone" and in my portraits im showing two similiar yet different skin tones</p>

[john tonai]

<p>To answer your question, yes you are getting better. The photos are now about the person rather than about you like your earlier shots. Those screamed "Special effect-look at me the photographer!" These point to your daughter. I agree with David's assessment of your background.</p>

<p>But I recommend looking at the background before you put the camera up to your face. It can be difficult to see the background through the viewfinder because normally the lens is opened up to its maximum aperture and the depth of field is at its shallowest.</p>

<p>However, I have no idea what he means by, "No amount of bokeh will disguise those cars." since bokeh is a quality, not a quantity. I assume he means that even at an extremely shallow depth of field, the car will still be evident. In that he is correct. Also the bright areas of the background on that shot distract from her.</p>

<p>Keep at it. The less you do in post production, the more you are forced to improve your camera techniques. Then, once you become comfortably proficient with your camera technique, finish it off with post-production techniques.</p>

[wogears]

<p>Basic processing skills would help.</p><div></div>

[joseph_wisniewski]

<p>If I may offer a silly comment...</p>

<p>Stevie2 appears to be at least partially about the tattoo, so it would help if that were in focus. It's a prominent foreground object, very distracting when it's soft. Focus a little farther forward, and stop down just enough to get DOF from tattoo to eyes.</p>

[dave_wilson1]

<p>J.W., not silly that's exactly what I was thinking, some more dof to get that and the face in the zone would look cleaner?</p>

[dcstep]

<p>John said:<br>

"However, I have no idea what he means by, "No amount of bokeh will disguise those cars." since bokeh is a quality, not a quantity."</p>

<p>Quit BSing us, you know that bokeh is both a quality and a quantity. If were only a quality there'd only be one degree. The more opaque it is, the higher the degree. It can be smooth or poorly defined, but to merely say "bokeh" gives no idea of how strong it is. The DOF can vary quite widely and the bokeh can still be quite strong, depending on how far back the background might be. Using a different lens, perhaps with a longer focal length and larger aperture might have made the bokeh stronger and more opaque. Still, in this case, it would have been better to either avoid the cars or process them out.</p>

<p>I agree that you should look at the background before looking through the lens, but pushing the preview button (available on most cameras) allows one to see what the sensor is going to see. With a different lense the bokeh might have been "stronger" and the cars might not have been as objectionable.</p>

[john tonai]

<p>I'm not BS'ing. Bokeh is a quality NOT a quantity. Depth of field is the quantity.</p>

[steve_levine]

<p>The posing and lighting are both "just there". Google "Joe Zeltsman", and study his old school classic portraiture lessons. Also read any "Monte Zucker" portrait lessons you can find online.</p>

<p>Light , by it's direction ,quantity and quality should flatter your subjects to appear 3D. A term referred to as "modeling". Also people are best photographed at certain angles. There are even masculine and feminine "head tilts". You are close, but have a little way to go.</p>

[davidjames]

<p>Learn to retouch skin. The first one is WAY to warmed up for my taste. Subtlety sometimes takes time to learn. Otherwise not bad.</p>

[justin_schnee]

<p>les, i dont get what u mean by basic processing skills would help. Honestly I have never had any formal training on anything about this and am just learning as I go. <br>

The only thing I see u have done to my image is desaturated the color and adjust the white balance. It looks like what happens when i soft proof a image that has profoto rgb as the documents color space to srgb. </p>

<p>that image may be more realistic but looks drab to me. </p>

<p>Thanks, yes i kind of figure the lighting and poses are just "there" but honestly im new to off camera flash and im in my "baby steps" mode. Right now have 2 lumopro 160 manual flashes and a old quantary flash with a digital slave on it. I have 2 light stands and 2 umbrellas and I have made a few diy snoots and strip lights. Havent used the strips yet and havent used the snoots in a portrait situation. Mainly just the umbrellas. </p>

<p>I have read one book on portrait photography, but most of what I have learned from that book goes out the door when Im shooting and I just kinda go with it, and adjust to what I think looks good. My eye is still training to appreciate the subtle difference that differenciate a good picture from a GREAT picture. Thank you for your time helping and I am glad to hear somewhat positive feedback on this one.</p>

[scott_murphy_photography]

<p>First off Justin, help us out here. The images you linked to are so huge it is hard to really see what you are talking about. Something on the order of 800 px on the long side is plenty.<br>

<br />I did not see the other images, but I will comment on the ones you presented here.<br>

The first thing I see is color balance. In both images, but especially the side profile, it balance is shifted WAY toward yellow. The highlights are also a little washed out as well. Bringing the brightness levels down and fixing the color makes a big difference.<br /><br /><a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v138/stm58/?action=view&current=girl1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v138/stm58/girl1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a><br /><br /><br />On the second one, the highlights are badly washed out. It takes a lot of practice to properly balance natural light and fill. In this case, the fill was way too "hot". Again, the color is shifted way toward yellow. I used curves in Photoshop to try and even out the exposure and take it down to a much more natural level. I also darkened the whole image and burned in that distracting background on the left side.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v138/stm58/?action=view&current=girl2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v138/stm58/girl2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a></p>

[justin_schnee]

<p>how does this one look? <br>

Bassically I was going by the rule with skin tones that yellow should be about a 1% or two higher than magenta.<br>

im aiming to keep the vibrance to my photo that the ones u have edited have changed. </p><div></div>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi Justin - Your last tweak of your daughter's skin color looks reasonable to my eye because it's close to the skin color of many people in my family. However, I have never seen her in person, and have absolutely no idea if she has even more of a fair, pinkish, far northern European coloring (as suggested by your last tweak), more of an Italian / Mediterranean complexion with more yellow hues, or more of a deeply bronzed complexion. Among the participants in this thread, probably only you know her true coloration. What is clear is that all of the tweaks presented are vastly superior to the images you had in your original post in this thread. The original versions were wildly off in color temperature, saturation, etc., and also had problems with blown highlights, blown red channel, etc. We're clearly moving in a good direction.</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

 

[tom_mann1]

<p>I happened to come across this thread a few hours after I first saw it. This time, I couldn't resist trying my own quick and dirty tweak of your image, of course, guessing completely at your daughter's true skin color.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p><div></div>

[dcstep]

<p>Tom, I like your tweak, but there's a bit too much pink in her skin tone now. Look at the pink glow on her arms. One key that the OP could judge is that blouse. Of course he knows his own daughter's skin, but that blouse shows a huge range of color in the examples in this thread. Which is closest?</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>@David - Good call about the arms. It turns out that because I didn't want to spend too much time on this, I pretty much let the arms fall where they may when I was doing global color correction. As I recall, I don't think I made any local corrections to them, whatsoever. Since the OP seemed to be going in a pink direction with his tweak, I assumed the subject's skin was fairly pink and let both the face and arms go in that direction.</p>

<p>Also, you made another good observation about the variability of the color of her blouse in the various tweaked versions.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, in the original JPG that was posted, the red channel of the blouse was completely maxed out to 255 everywhere on the blouse. Thus, everyone that tried restoring this image could only guess at its true hue and saturation. Because of this, color correction of the blouse was essentially handled separately from cc of the rest of the image, and because of this, its color absolutely should not be relied on to guide the color corrections elsewhere in the image.</p>

<p>In fact, the red channel in subject's face in the original was also almost completely blown out. Its R values were above 240 almost everwhere, and in many areas, in the high 240s. Since these numbers are so close to the maximum of 255, any small error in them would also get blown out of proportion when they were tamed. So, like the blouse, the folks who attempted to reconstruct good facial color had to make some guesses as to what it really should look like. This is undoubtedly what led to the wide variation in facial color as well among the several tweaks to this image that were posted.</p>

<p>The challenges of blown out areas, or areas which are nearly blown out in one or more of the channels is exactly what attracted me to this image. I'm interested in honing my chops in photo restoration, and such problems (or closely related ones) occur in the vast majority of images submitted for restoration. Color correcting this image would probably have been a one click no-brainer if the OP had looked at the red channel of the histogram and simply dialed in a half stop or so of negative exposure compensation before he took the shot.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[justin_schnee]

<p>well actually the original picture had a lot of exposure and brightness applied in post. here is the original straight out of camera. converted to a jpg with nikon software, so it looks like what i seen on the camera and not a raw image opened up in camera raw.</p>

<p>honestly my tweak was off of my horrible rendition originally posted. I was going for a better looking skin tone more so than a natural but since i have posted i now understand the importance of a natural skin tone as opposed to a more pleasing one.<br>

and on a side note cuz i just caught this. it is pretty humurous to me, but this girl is not my daughter. I guess the confusion is from my original post that I had posted pictures of my daughter earlier. This girl is roughly around my age and is a friend of mine, which is why it is funny to my that you said my daughter. this has no effect on the topic though</p><div></div>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi Justin - My apologies for mistaking the subject for your daughter. I mis-read your original post. It must have been very, very funny to you since the subject is roughly your age. At least it's not as bad as what happened to a friend of mine: He married a woman that was about 10 years younger than himself, and she looked even younger than that. On their honeymoon, the concierge at the ritzy hotel they were staying at asked her if "...her grandfather was enjoying their time together" (ie, as if he was on his last legs) ! ! ! :-)</p>

<p>WRT the color correction, it would have been vastly easier for us if we had been working off of the in-camera JPG or NEF instead of a version that had already been processed. This is the reason that many commercial customers want the unedited version of all images submitted to them.</p>

<p>BTW, pay absolutely no attention to the person who complained about the size being too large. If someone doesn't want to work on a large version, it's trivial to downsize. OTOH it's impossible to upsize if it starts out too small. Post the 700 px wide photo.net version just so people here have something concrete to look at, but also provide a link to the full size version. If your computer and Internet connection are fast enough, it's much easier and more accurate to edit a full rez version.</p>

<p>I think the bottom line of this exercise is never blow out any channel, whether in-camera or in post.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>I just had a few free minutes. Here's what 3 or 4 minutes of processing can do to your in-camera jpg. Most of the time was in ACR, a bit in PS. Vastly easier than working from the processed version.</p>

<p>Tom M</p><div></div>

[rob_piontek]

<p>I spent a bunch of time this past winter trying to get the skin tones right in different images I had previously shot. PS tutorials, curves, guiding CMYK and RGB numbers for what it 'should' be. I found it really difficult as my eyes would constantly adjust to what I was working on and what looked good one day would look pretty bad the next.</p>

<p>So my conclusion is that the thing to do is get the white balance right in the first place. That's all you really need. You can tweak it a bit if you need to, shoot a grey card so you have a true neutral point. Also though I've always shot RAW + JPEG, and ignored the JPEGs, I more and more find the Nikon jpegs have better color and white balance than what I get from my LR raw conversions. </p>

<p>Warming your flash with a CTO gel or a gold reflector can help to improve skin tones without having to go to PS. I've been using a 'zebra' colored reflector which is a gold/silver mix and it can be quite nice in the right light for improving skin tones.</p>

[justin_schnee]

<p>yes, i have noticed that i like the jpg out of camera and try to get them to look like that but always a bit off. <br>

tom i like that rendition but a little to sharp in the face for my taste, which is completly oposite to the other one where it was a little soft, but colors are great none the less. i have editied a few of the original nefs in lightroom and ill post them in a few hours after the kids are done swimming lessons, if i only had a 1.8 i would have some shots of them but o well my fastest lens is my kit lens :(.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi Justin - You are absolutely right about the difference in sharpness. On the tweaked version that I based on your tweaked version, I was essentially forced to use a lot of smoothing to get rid of problems ( posterization ) introduced by trying to fix the maxed-out channel. </p>

<p>In contrast, on my most recent version (based on your in-camera JPG), smoothing no longer was unnecessary to avoid posterization and other artifacts. In addition, I found that I was spending way too much time on this little side project, so I didn't do any blurring / skin smoothing whatsoever on the my most recent version. I should have applied similar amounts of skin smoothing so you could do an apples-to-apples comparison.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[rainbowphotography]

<p>Hi Tom,<br>

Can you recommend some online resources for colour adjustment on Photoshop?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>