Help with Editing Image

[sam_express]

<p>I have a client with a photog family member and they are telling me they are unhappy with this image. They edited it and sent me an example of mine and their edited version side by side to show me what it should look like. Can anyone jump in and tell me what they think? Any thoughts/comments/advice much appreciated. I'll post my full image and then a second that is the side by side. I kind of thought their 'edited' version looked blown out and faded, but maybe I'm the one who is wrong and my image needs work. Here is the link to my image http://www.photo.net/photo/17437975 and the one to their edit (http://www.photo.net/photo/17437976) with their suggested edit on the left. I am feeling pretty defeated today. </p>

[sam_express]

<p>Better link to "edited" image http://www.photo.net/photo/17437976</p>

 

[William Michael]

<p>The error appears to be that the Subject is underexposed.<br />The Image, as presented, shows poor detail in the Subject’s face.</p>

<p>The shot appears to be made with a Canon T4i (650D), EF-S 18 to 55 F/3.5~5.6 IS (at 24mm) and pulled at F/9 @ 1/160s @ ISO100; the Camera’s TTL set to ‘Evaluative’ and No Flash was fired.<br />The Subject is (generally) positioned in OPEN SHADE, in DAYLIGHT with SOFT but DISTINCT Shadows elsewhere by SUNLIGHT, but, the Subject’s face is tending to be in DEEP OPEN SHADE.<br>

<br />Typically, we would expect (for Open Shade <em>when there is Full, Bright Sunlight elsewhere</em>) exposures of about F/5.6~F/8 @ 1/100 @ ISO100.</p>

<p>I expect that the TTL Meter in Evaluative Mode reckoned the patch of Green Grass lit by Sunlight and/or the Bridal Gown and that reckoning skewed exposure to be incorrect (underexposed) for the Skin Tones of the Subject.<br />I suggest the shot (for for correct Skin Tone Exposure) is about Two Stops underexposed.</p>

<p>For example, if the TTL Meter reckoned the Bridal Gown as exactly 'Photographic Grey', the Skin Tones would be about 2 Stops underexposed.<p>

<p>Flash, correctly used as Fill, would have benefitted the Exposure of the Skin Tones and would also balance the Exposure of the Subject with the Exposure of the Background, which is lit by Direct Sunlight.</p>

<p>It is possible that there is a slight Subject Movement captured, in the Head and L. Hand </p>

<p>Apropos the enhancement image: I believe that a better job could be done in Post Production.</p>

<p>WW </p>

<p> </p>

[William Michael]

<p>Rough and Indicative ONLY, Original is on top:<br /><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17438012-lg.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="700" /><br />In Photoshop - (done quickly)</p>

<ul>

<li>Shadow Detail enhanced in gradual steps (1% four times).</li>

<li>Dodge face, dodge dress.</li>

<li>Increase Mid Tone Contrast.</li>

<li>Enhance Red and a slight adjustment of Colour Balance</li>

</ul>

<p>There are many methods one can use, this is a very quick example only and not to be considered as "the final".</p>

<p>However, whilst deft Post Production can enhance the image - <br />The underlying issue, (as mentioned), appears to be the underexposure of the Subject generally and specifically underexposure the Skin Tones on the Face and most likely a slight Subject Movement being caught by too slow a Shutter Speed for Available Light Capture.</p>

<p>WW</p>

<p> </p>

[simon_evans1]

<p>Awesome reply from William above and I agree the image does appear to be under exposed slightly but not so far as couldn’t be quite simply recovered in post-production.<br>

Is this the only image they weren’t happy with? I mean the pose looks nice, it doesn’t look too posed, I’m not sure on the sharpness but I think the general consensus including that of the families photographer friend is the image is slightly under exposed. May I ask if you were shooting RAW? As this would give you a lot more freedom in post-production.<br>

I noticed on your original image even your watermark looks very dim in the corner, in fact I didn’t notice it really until the “edited” image was viewed.<br>

Anyway, I see images even paid images as art you’ve got the framing right in my opinion and it’s generally a pleasing image and I don’t think you should feel too gazumped or cut up about it. Personally I wouldn’t have presented them with an image like this as I’d have critiqued myself before supplying it too them, as a general pointer (that’s if I’m qualified to give pointers?) I’d advise you to critique every one of your images before supplying them, just ask yourself… What could make this image better?<br>

Some video’s and a website I’ve been browsing recently for helping my with my own critiques is FroKnowsPhoto, they have a forum (which I ‘m not a member of) but over there they have a forum section where you can download RAW files and edit them yourself for practice or whatever. You can then upload your edited version and see what the bunch of contributors think of it. May be worth submitting your RAW file of this and seeing what people do with it? Just a thought.<br>

All the best<br>

Si<br>

- Ohh just to add, I'm not surgesting you shouldn't aim to capture an image exposed correctly first time by the way ;-)</p>

[henryp]

<p>IMO William's on the money. I'll add two observations.<br>

First, I think 98% of every outdoor wedding and portrait frame I've ever exposed included off-camera fill. It balances shadows, helps with color fidelity and contrast and in your case in particular would have balanced foreground and background.<br>

Second IMO you can NEVER rely on in-camera metering for a wedding. The bride's dress is white, the tuxedos are black and the camera's meter wants to make it all a middle grey tone. This is why the photography deities invented spot meters and hand-held incident meters. In the situation your photo depicts I'd have used an incident meter, a fill flash at -1 and manual metering.</p>

<p>Henry Posner<br /><strong>B&H Photo-Video</strong></p>

[william-porter]

<p>I agree with what William and everybody else has said. The image is underexposed. (I wouldn't say "slightly.") We can talk later about how NOT to do this again, but for the moment, couple questions pertinent to the crisis at hand:</p>

<ol>

<li>Did you shoot raw?</li>

<li>What editing software do you have? (Aperture, Lightroom, etc)</li>

</ol>

<p>William's given you a pretty good demonstration of how the image should look. If you contact me directly, and send me the image file, I'll be happy to spend five minutes with it (no charge, no credit required) and do what I can. I'll be abel to do a little more if the answer to question #1 above is "yes" but I can try either way.</p>

<p>But you can do this yourself. It's hard to tell on my Macbook Air's screen but I'm guessing it's at least a full stop underexposed, so boost exposure by about that amount, taking care NOT to blow out the highlights or kill the detail in the gown. Shadow exposure could be increased (lightening the shadows). I don't generally do that in Lightroom or Aperture using curves: I generally use the slider for shadows. At that point I'd look and see if the image were improved by a boost in clarity (Lightroom) or definition (Aperture) and some sharpness.</p>

<p>Will</p>

<p> </p>

[sam_express]

<p>Wow, this was my first post ever to this site and I am so impressed with and thankful for the responses! I did shoot it in RAW, but I have plenty of room to grow (obviously) in post processing. I'm not making excuses (as much as giving an explanation of why I allowed this to happen) but it was incredibly hot and the entire wedding party (B + G, too) were pretty anxious to get inside. The ceremony started 30 minutes late due to lost this or missing that...so I was feeling VERY rushed (and my time was cut, of course...so I am missing images since the bride wasn't dressed until AFTER her ceremony was scheduled to start, guests seated and all). I arrived 3 hours before the scheduled ceremony - but still wound up without images due to the bride not being ready (any advice on that situation?). I did use fill flash on other outdoor shots, but did not use a grey card or spot meter (something I will do without fail in the future). I had a helper and a reflector that I intended to use as well, but felt it was all I could do to just get them to pose for me...I am struggling with not taking charge enough in my shoots...but at what point are you being demanding if both the B & G are not motivated about pictures? So, my other question was (because this is feeling like a tug-of-war between the photog family member and the bride and myself) is the other photog's "edited" version on the left blown out and faded? She also told the bride to tell me to calibrate my monitor (it is). On the open shade issue, I completely understand. But just a tad in front of the bride is full sun, this was shot 4 and1/2 hours before the sun would go down. Places to put them were so limited and the background (or lack of) also dictated placement (there are even objects cloned out of this shot). Both venues for ceremony and reception were tough. SW, (not the ideal) is between PSP x5 and Photoshop Elements 10...but I do love the Nik I am using. I do have an older PS, but I haven't been using it. William Porter, thank you so much for your offer...I'll be happy to send you the image AND give you credit for your help. They did like two other images, (all the sneak peeks I've posted so far)...but the real problem is I wasn't allowed to use flash (and the church was tight with bad angles)...so I shot at a higher ISO than is ideal and now I'm having to clean the noise from each shot during the ceremony. I'd have liked to have rented faster glass - but it's not available anywhere near the town I live in. Regarding the watermark, I actually added that in a tan color to keep it muted, I am torn on the watermark issue and didn't want it to intrude too much on this particular image (sometimes it seems more acceptable than others - like with a shoe shot, I made it much more noticeable). Sorry for the long post...thanks so much to everyone for your help - feels like I found water in the Gobi desert and I'm taking a big drink! </p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>The comment relayed to you to calibrate your monitor immediately suggests to me that they don't like the muted / tan effect that you added and probably want something more along these lines. IMHO, you should run a few brighter, more dynamic versions of a few images by them and see how they react. You may have to compromise your artistic inclinations to the preferences of the customer.</p>

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

[tom_mann1]

<p>Also, their preferences for a certain "look" may depend on whether they are viewing the images on a monitor or in the form of a nice print. When you discuss this with them, you should also go armed with a few actual prints.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>PS - BTW, the major changes in my tweaked version were done in ACR, with some more minor changes made in PS proper.</p>

[sam_express]

<p>Tom M., that is something I am struggling with a bit. My image was certainly a bit dark (and I definitely failed to properly expose it in-camera) but I thought it had a more romantic feel to it. Of course I will brighten it up and I do want to please the client...but do you ever find yourself resisting editing to a degree that you feel diminishes your image? I don't think this particular image will ever come to that...it's certainly no big deal on this one to lighten it some. Lastly, just an 'aside' on the watermark issue to everyone: do you think the watermark needs to be light-colored or muted? </p>

[william-porter]

<p>Sam writes:</p>

<blockquote>Wow, this was my first post ever to this site and I am so impressed with and thankful for the responses! I did shoot it in RAW, but I have plenty of room to grow (obviously) in post processing.</blockquote>

<p>But unless there's something seriously wrong with your computer display, the basic problem here occurred at the time of capture, not during the post-processing.</p>

<p>Remember, the camera wants to make everything middle gray, so to get a bride's dress to appear white you have to "overexpose" by a stop or stop and a half. Or to put it differently, for a shot like this, you would want to "expose to the right", that is, you'd want to push your histogram as far to the right as possible without blowing out details in the bride's dress. (Blowing out a few details in the clouds might be acceptable.) Quick shot with center-weighted metering on your camera should get you in the ball park, then you can look at the histogram and make one quick adjustment. Using an incident meter is even better.</p>

<p>If you have the time and the equipment to add flash to this scene in order to reduce the exposure range, that of course is the best option — but it may add considerably to the effort involved. However, it's possible to do a shot like this in full daylight. Tony Corbell did a great class recently on Creative Live where he was shooting in mid-afternoon of a bright day on the roof of a building — no shade whatever. He ended up using a big scrim AND a couple of reflectors for fantastic pictures, and of course, at a wedding you may not have four modifiers and four assistants handy. That's one of the 47 reasons why wedding photography is such a challenge!</p>

 

<p align="center">•</p>

 

<blockquote>I am struggling with not taking charge enough in my shoots...but at what point are you being demanding if both the B & G are not motivated about pictures?</blockquote>

<p>You touch on a couple serious issues here.</p>

<p>As much as possible, you want to solve these problems — and all problems! — before the day of the wedding. Pick clients who DO care about the photos. If they don't care enough, you try to educate them, and doing their engagement shoot will help. Of course, you really have to be able to deliver, and everybody goes through a phase where they encounter problems and learn from them. That's how you get experience.</p>

<p>And on the day of the wedding, you do have to learn how to assert yourself. I'm not a wall-flower by any means, but I too have found this a difficult lesson to learn, because, ideally, I would really like to be invisible while shooting a wedding. It's taken me a while to learn that that's just not possible. You can't be a bully, either, of course, and if the bride or the bride and groom simply won't cooperate, well, you can't make 'em. But you have to try, and you have to have the people skills to make it work.</p>

<p>Will</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi Sam -</p>

<p>The main issue isn't simple brightening - it's bringing the foreground brightness up without blowing out the background. It's also color purity in the dress and skin tones, both of which would have been helped enormously by fill flash set to an appropriate (ie, higher) level.</p>

<p>WRT artistic edits and imposing one's own vision on the clients, one should always have such discussions ahead of time (eg, "do you prefer images like these ... or these?"). Then, if you find their preferences are wildly different from yours, you can gracefully back out at that stage.</p>

<p>My experience is that the parents have much more conservative tastes when it comes to wedding photography. They want bright white dresses and good skin tones. Often the B&G are willing to be more experimental, and often will be persuaded by the "look" of wedding albums of their peers.</p>

<p>Gotta run,</p>

<p>T</p>

<p>PS - and as William just said, if at all possible, these adjustments should happen at the time of capture, not in PP.</p>

[sam_express]

<p>Thanks, guys. Yes, I understand what you are saying, Tom and William, and that it didn't happen at the time of capture when it needed to...and I know it's partially because I just didn't feel "allowed" to make the time necessary (and I also need to get much faster) at changing up settings and checking the histograms between a few shots to make sure I'm in the money. I was feeling so pressured to let everyone go...some important shots I did get (like a Thank You shot and the Groom's nightstand shot, things discussed in a prior meeting) only happened at my urging them to stay longer...and I don't think it was more than 30 minutes total (but I need to double-check that). Even though I gave them a contract and shot wish list with places for anything special...I still had a ton of surprises on the day. Didn't find out until attending rehearsal the day before they were pouring sand, didn't find out until 5 min. before there were sentimental items and plans for football toss, etc. I asked multiple times ahead of the wedding on FB as well as putting places for that in my paperwork. But all of this may be off topic (sorry!) and need a new thread...my immediate need was for help with an edit and you all have been terrific! Thank you again. <br /> P.S. Sorry, I didn't mean brightening as an adjustment, I meant when viewing. Should have used different wording.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Sam, by any chance, is your Photoshop computer a laptop?</p>

<p>Tom</p>

[sam_express]

<p>Yes. But I try to be careful with tilting for viewing. </p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Variation of the image with tilt angle is the most obvious problem. </p>

<p>The second problem is that even though you calibrated the screen using a hardware calibrator, most amateur calibration software never tells you how close to perfect the result is. So, you know you improved matters, but you generally don't know by how much. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, laptops are notorious for inaccurate displays, and it's almost impossible to tell this by just looking at the screen. I suggest you compare the various versions of your image in this thread on several different desktop machines. Hopefully, you will see VERY noticeable differences between them. If you don't see the same degree of variation on your laptop, it probably doesn't respond well to calibration and you shouldn't use it for color-critical editing.</p>

<p>T</p>

[dave_wilson1]

Whether you "wanted" to pose this or not, it is basically decent but an awkward pose. Two things to consider in the future

when dealing with gowns. Gowns have seams and lines. When you start to break up all the lines and the flow of the dress

as it was designed, it's very hard to finish off the shot and make it look really polished. More specific, the back seam of

the train is pointing out toward the left lower corner more or less, so as a result, if that's the part of the dress you wanted

to "show" then the bride should have been rotated more to the left and her right foot pointing well out toward the lower

right corner of the frame. All the seams and lines of the dress line up, her hips are more set and her leg position causes a

more feminine type curve and presentation. The flowers don't need two hands in that type pose. Right hand only palm out

with the bouquet layed into the palm and down the fingers and out at her side. You have what I call the popsicle flower

pose, it has it's place but not the best choice here. From there you can choose where to place a kicker fill. Either to the

front of her face from the right, or across the back from about 10-12 ft and to the left side of the train. This second lighting

is tricky and takes some practice to get right so that enough fill falls nicely on the face. In your case I would start with a

low level fill from the brides face angle to accent the face a bit, NOT too strong, the difference in color temp will be

enough to provide an accent. Enjoy!

[fotografz]

<p>Nice location and ambient lighting for a backdrop. If I may make a few suggestions ...</p>

<p>When photographing a plus sized subject <em>reconsider</em> posing them from the side, and for sure do not use a 24mm focal length because it squats them and distorts by widening them. With all models you need to tell them to not hunch or let their shoulders shrug ... the shrug is especially important with plus sized subjects because they end up with no neck. Have them push their shoulders down, and even exaggerate it if necessary.</p>

<p>Exposure issues happen to everyone eventually ... fortunately there are software solutions to almost anything these days. IMO they are well worth the investment. On the sample below, I used "Digital Fill Flash" from OnOne software. Because most of these software solutions work in layers, you'll need PS. Layers allows you to then erase parts of a fix to resore the original background, etc.</p>

<p>I also slimmed her down by removing the 24mm wide angle distortion ... and even took it a bit further because I've never once had a Bride tell me I made them look to good. : -)</p>

<p>- Marc</p>

<div></div>

[ellery_chua___singapore]

<p>tom good pp save. Sam you need to use the reflector or fill flash for shots like this - saves time after the shoot.</p>