photobiscuits

Thank you so much, what a well thought out and informative comment!

I looked at this picture again last night and hated it! I played with it until my eyes went buggy and then again today. I couldn't figure out what the problem was, but after viewing your adjustments - it's quite obvious!

I have another similar picture, from the same 'shoot' of her sister. I am going to take into account what you have suggested in learning to be more effective with pp.

Thanks again!

Attached are my further efforts in making this picture into what I'd rather have captured in camera. Among other things I am trying to add/maintain some depth to the shadows in her face, though I think I've made them a little too dark. Ultimately I'd like to get this straight from camera, but until I get a lot more practice with lighting, this pp stuff is good learning.

OK, so as far as portraits go, what do you think of this picture? Ittook about half hour photoshop to adjust the colour balance as best asI could since the backlight I have (500w incandescent) is a differentcolour than my main (sb600). Also tried to darken the overbright sideof her shirt somewhat.

I wonder how I can avoid the too-bright highlights on her shirt, whilekeeping the same light on her face? I might be able to save it in ps,but would rather have a way to accomplish it without all the pp.

Is this a good choice of aperture and dof blur? Tried to be consciousof what was going on there and think it's good.

For the purists, is the catchlight good? Too big? In the right spot?

Thanks for your suggestions and opinions.

thank you very much for something more useful, cheers!

edit: by that I meant the usefulness of the comment before the generous rating.

Use Edit-Adjustments-Hue/Saturation to correct colour.

Hmm, yes I brightened up the model by using a separate layer, then masking out the background. And changes made to the background were made in lightroom, throughout the whole picture. I'm not seeing the blow out areas, at least not much different than the original. I calibrated my monitor in the hours before working on this picture - I am not sure what you are seeing. I agree that there are differences between the colour and contrast in the background PP. Perhaps I should recalibrate and take a second look...

And next time I will pay attention to my camera settings and perhaps avoid this whole mess.

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Gerry. I am also a pp novice, and was very surprised that anything could be saved from the darkness of the original.

I am sure that this could have been accomplished without the PP had I a brighter flash, or a big reflector, for the fill. And now that you mention it, I notice I had my camera's flash set to -3, the weakest setting possible! A left over setting from a previous photo. I wonder what difference it would have made had i noticed at the time and turned up the flash.

Ah, well, you live you learn. It's the learning that's the fun part =)

cheers!

I was able to save a very dark picture from the recycle bin. Original

picture attached in the comments section.

The sun is directly behind the model in this shot. Onboard flash was used to add some light to her front. The RAW (attached) turned out predictably dark. I was surprised at what I was able to recover by hacking away with lightroom and photoshop.

Model is a separate layer in photoshop, brightened and dodge/burned a bit. Colour adjustments made in lightroom. I'm pretty happy with it. Suggestions? Comments?

Also working on an unintrusive but legible copyright tag. I don't like them but I guess in this day they're needed.

Used what I have learned over the past year to redo and replace this picture.