gerund

IMO, the line of least resistance in your case is higher ISO. You can compensate with a good noise reduction software such as neat image.

Noise occurs primarily in the darker areas of the photo. You can always do selections in PS and treat only the darker portion with noise reduction or even vary the noise reduction between the light and dark areas without disturbing the whole photo. You might want to look at the

new Sony Alpha 7 camera. Allows ISO up to 6400 and has advanced tech to reduce noise in camera. Ideal for natural light along with a 50mm 1.4 lens.

You have 16 bit capability in PSP X2. Use a trial download and see

if it has what you need.

You might try select/copy right side of face, do horizontal flip and then use transform tool to size and move it over the left side of the face to paste or possibly just clone it over the left side after flipping.

You can accomplish this to some degree in PS.

Duplicate the photo in layers, in second layer, select the couple

with selector tool and use that layer with transparent background.

Then choose linear motion blur or radial motion blur tool on 1st layer to blur the background.

For a less staged rendition or multiple direction motion consider

taking two photos. Take one photo with couple and one photo without

couple. On the photo without you can use one of the several methods

already described to blur the background. Then select the people in the first unblurred photo w/transparent background and layer them over the second blurred background photo.

 

Gerry

Jennifer,

 

Good visual instruction is next to hands on. I have found

http://smartflix.com/store/category/63/Photography to be a reasonably

priced source for good photography instructional videos.

 

Gerry

Both faces appear a little soft to me. You might try selecting faces in PS and sharpening a tad on layer.

 

Gerry

This one was named years ago. No intention of name similarity.<div></div>

One possibility is to use a password secure pdf file.

These are very easy to put into a website and you need no

special configuration to do so.

 

Gerry

see http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00L6Mo

 

scroll to the bottom of the thread.

 

Gerry

Smugmug at http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-quality

According to this your 1504x1000 would do ok on 8x10

for their lab.

 

Gerry

If you are planning to use the 50mm 1.8 you are most probably wanting to

utilize the larger aperture for selective focus. This may prove more difficult in harsh sun conditions. Might consider using a ND filter

to tame the harshness and eliminate some of the possible hot spots.

 

Gerry

This works for me. In PS select the body area in question with the lasso tool and put the selection on a color adjustment layer mask. Feather from 3 to 8 pixels or so depending on the area. Select the red channel in the adjustment layer and move the right handle on the histogram until you get your desired color. Then merge the layers. You can also alter with the left and middle handles to your desired shade depending where most of your exposure data lies.

 

Gerry

This is adjusted with a soft light layer, a multiply layer, an warming filter layer and a levels layer with a slight hue change.<div></div>

The unknown variable that you are looking for may well be your monitor.

Unless you are using a high grade monitor such as an Eizo that is capable of resolving the adobe rgb colorspace and have the monitor adjusted for that colorspace, you will not be able to soft proof that colorspace successfully in photoshop.

In this particular photo, I would be more concerned with the small

skin bumps than any noise. These seem to draw my attention before I notice any noise and they are not appealing to the photo. Might try spot healing brush in PS on these to smooth them out.

 

As for noise, doing a magic wand selection on the darker areas and using neat image on those areas only usually works for me.

 

Gerry

Brenden,

 

If you spend 6 or 7 hours on a single image you are using it for

much more than to touch up zits. Never spent more than 5 minutes

on zits. FWIW, maybe you just should have re-shot the photo.

 

Agreed on where to focus your attention part however.

 

Gerry

Brendan,

 

I love the fact that most people are coming up with PS tricks to fix the light because at this point in time, that is probably the best way to go about it. However, IMHO, the lighting on this pic is pretty good to start with and there seems to be plenty of shadow in this pic for its intended use if it in fact is going to be used for an

advert poster for a gym , most probably not fine art.

I don't perceive any of these works to be plastic. They are really attempts trying to bring the best features out and I think everyone probably had a lot of fun doing it. I know that I did.

So my final critique is for you, lighten up. Ha, ha. Life is good.

 

Gerry

Mike,

 

As you say she is a sportswoman. I thought this type portrait needed to stay bold and therefore stayed away from blurring or softening the outline. Also left alot of vascularity in the face to emphasize the outdoor look. Blended soft light in the red channel of a levels layer at about 20% opacity then brightened along with bumping up the contrast in another layer. Worked on widening the jaw line and whitening the eyes. Also enlarged the mouth slightly.

For some subjects this might be too much change. My own wife has raised the dickens with me for taking 20 years off of her in a portrait. Some lament that they don't look that good and some love it

that they can. All depends on the subjects state of mind about their looks. Good luck with your portrait. Only takes about 10 minutes in PS once you pick up the techniques. Would highly recommend the book "Skin" to help you with lighting and retouching.

 

Gerry

Edward and Jonalan,

Sorry about the long delay in answering. Using the extractor in PS Elements 4 or 5 you can get near perfect extractions by basically just by painting different colored lines on the subject and the background. These are growing very sophisticated and easy to use. There is also a good technique for use in extracting fine hair, etc. The technique is a little too long to explain here but can be found in tutorials. Basically you change a color photo to black and white and then use a mask to paint the figure out.

You really can accomplish a lot in PS. Might try some soft light in the red channel in levels

 

Gerry<div></div>

Hi Speed sync works well for outdoor flash fill. I find HS flash fill is much more mobile than reflectors for outdoor shots and not nearly as distracting as reflectors are for small children who usually look upon them as toy objects and tend to move toward them to play. I generally find post processing in PS to be much more effective for blurring backgrounds than opening up too much aperture which severely limits clear focus throughout the subject area, many times resulting in parts of the subject being out of focus also.

Using composites for background scenery allows unlimited background combinations and using current improved masking techniques in PS are many times preferable to posing a child in unfamiliar territory.

With extraction tools becoming more and more sophisticated, It almost

is counterproductive to put up backdrops any more.

Just in PSE5 I can extract figures from backgrounds in about the

time it takes to scroll a line across them. Add from a library of digital backgrounds available for a pittance on ebay and you pretty much have a whole studio in your computer.

 

Gerry

This appears to be mostly photoshop. Reasoning is that he has some of the reflections of the red on his face and lips but other surfaces such as hands,shirt and cig do not bear any reflective traces of this lighting. Would therefore have to assume it is artificially produced in the background

 

Gerry

Photoshop Elements 5.0 will do the trick.

This link might help answer your question

 

http://www.digitalproducer.com/2004/02_feb/features/02_09/copyright_caveats.htm