683.7

Comments appreciated and replied to.

good sensibiliti, i like it!

Hello Barry, Gotta say that I'm enfatuated with moles and freckles and this has got it all. Very nice... Cheers, Raymond

Thanks for the comments. As to the moles and freckles, this image is taken with a 6x7. While processing this for posting, I zoomed in on the moles and got a definite dermatologist's view of things.

 

And Raymond: you also seem to have a deep appreciation of tattoos; or at least you find models with lots of them (or is that just the way they come these days?).

 

I tried posting this for comment only, as the more I experience the ratings system, the more arbitrary it seems. The only thing that really matters to me is the comments.

I like the simplicity and intimacy of this shot and the composition is very unusual.

 

I felt the low contrast in the highlight range gives a rather flat effect so I tried reprinting to increase the gradation of the skin tones.

 

Best wishes, Jonathan

That's definitely an improvement. How did you go about doing it? Select the skin area and then adjust curves? (A happily-named tool in this context.)

The problem with just increasing the contrast is that the texture contrast is increased as well making it all very blotchy. So a fairly quick alternative is to select the skin area, copy to a new layer, blur it heavily to make the texture disappear, increase the contrast in this smooth layer and then make its opacity 50% (approx) so the original texture shows through, finally adjusting the lightness so the edges don't show.

 

A similar technique helps to soften lumpy grain patterns caused by noise aliasing, without making the skin look plastic, and also works for granular-looking skies.

 

Best wishes, Jonathan

Very interesting technique. I was not familiar with that. I'll definitely be playing around with it.