Ok, I took this picture with my mom's digital camera (crappy old 2Mp HP thing but still better than mine - lol). I edited it in Photoshop. Tell me what you think. I was really proud of it but thought I might need a second (and third and fourth and...) opinion. Anything wrong with it? Any minor adjustments you think it needs. I tried to clean up the skin and age lines but not smooth the skin too much. So, gite it all you got here - I really need some more eyes. Thanks so much!!

Dawn


PS - keep in mind the low quality of these big pics, all that nasty stuff is not there in real life - :D

Dawn....

ITS BRILLIANT!!!!

Well done you did a great job!

Great job on the skintones in eliminating the shiney areas! The background leaves me kinda cold. Don't know if it's the color or streaks. It's such a great photo, I'd prefer to see a more "studio background" look. Maybe pick up the blue in the neck piece JMHO

I know what you mean on that Swampy. At first when I thought about the backgroudn color I thought gray, but it was suggested by my SO to use tan or brown. I tried it and did not like that at all, and thought blue too - but that was just awful really. But as soon as I saw it with the gray I loved it. I guess its just a matter of personal taste though.

Now, the way the backgroudn turned out I kinda liked it. I thought it looked like really a piece of that cloth that photographers use for background (that I cannot think of the name of) I even liked this effect more so than the ones I have seen with adding noise and making that look like tiny streaks that are to simulate the texture of the fabric. I dunno, I may play around with this doing other background types and see what happens, just for play. JUST TRIED IT AND YOU ARE RIGHT ABOUT THAT ONE - IT IS REALLY TOO COLD. OFF TO MAKE SOME LAST MINUTE ADJUSTMENTS - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! :D

And Thankya Legacy.

Ya'll have really made my day so far.

Dawn

Add a septia gradiant for the background i think its perfect as it is, but the septia will bring out the warm colors from his face!

Hi Dawn

This is just a guideline....I am not good at explaining tutorials on things so i did you screenshots.

I think you can capture the steely gray look, but keep the overall background masculine. I didn't want to try to recreate your skintones so I worked from your first rendition.

Made a selection of the subject (my preference is to use the pen tool) and made this the top layer.

Made a new layer (below the subject) and picked a dark and light shade of steely blue then did Render Clouds a couple times, till I found one I liked. Ran GBlur on this layer to soften the cloud effect. Then ran a lighting effect (Spotlight with the blue channel set for some texture) Lowered the transparency to about 90%

I duplicated the subject layer and filled the selection with black. Off set this a little left and up. Did a Transform-distorte to reshape the shadow. Then a GBlur (again, pretty big blur) to soften the edges of the shadow. Sandwiched the shadow layer between the subject layer and the background (clouds) layer. Lowered the transparency on this layer to about 75% (usually much darker than I like for a shadow, but it needed some "beef" because the background is already pretty dark.)

Just one idea. I'm sure there are many ways to approach it, but I'm a traditionalist and this is really a great "formal" shot.

Swampy that is nice...but i think you have now darkened the picture, needs to be alittle more lightened, your changing her picture when its the background only you needed to change. JMHO

Swampy

Nice background for sure! I think that it works well

......

In situations like this is would be nice to know what the event taking place is. Why is he dressed as such and so on? There may be a color theme that would work based on these assumptions. Uh....but, what do I know!

T

Legacy...

Didn't intend to darken the subject. I noted some color shift when I saved for the web. Lost the sharpness too. :-(

Well I guess its a matter of taste and not technical difficulty. The context of the photo probably determines what the background should be. I thought the steely background left me kind of cold. I sort of liked the bricks. Strong and Warm Background of a picture of a strong person. I did tone the bricks down some and blurred them. I did not work on the skin etc.
I guess we are all different

Well, the pic is for a hall of fame induction here in my town. He needed a pic for them to display. The bricks were just whats on the outside of my building and we needed better lighting than we could get inside - it was a could day. I dont like the brick background personally, because I think it is too distracting from the subject. And while I do like your technique you used Swampy, I kinda think it is a bit dark and really does not make him really pop in the picture as he does with a lighter background. What I ended up doing, so far, was I changed the backround to a tan-ish color and then lowered the opacity of that to about 50% over the gray background. I like how that turned out better than just the tan because I think that his skin really comes out with the gray background, and this lowering the opacity of the tan was a good compromise between the coldness of the gray and the distraction of the tan. I will post the one I decided on when I get a chance, hopefully tomorrow. ;)

Anyways, these were all great thoughts and great ideas. Love to see how everyone sees the same thing differently. Cool. :D

Dawn

The forum is like a learning curb and a soundboard all in one, what counts is you learn from your own talent and you share your views.

Dawn, I really liked what you did, especially your last rendition. Just a couple of ideas that may or may not make sense because a lot of it IS personal taste. For myself, I really like the way light reflects off black skin. This may be overdone but you get the drift. Also, backgrounds can have a profound impact on an image. Again I like your background but don't forget about your subject. In this instance, he appears to be a upstanding person with strong moral "fibre" so perhaps incorporating that idea into the background might make sense.

Cheers
Dave

He looks like a real sweetie, a really nice man doesn't he?

Great work!
I've had a go at it, too. I hope you don't mind... :blush:

* stretched BG to look like having taken with a telephoto lens.
* just experimented about 1 hour with lighting effects. :dizzy:

sorry guys, the original image remains the best out of all of your attempts, the light is just not there to merge the subject on a studio type background.

Hi Denisp

I would not disagree with you. I do think that if you have the right skill sets, you can achieve something pretty darn good. It's understanding the right type of background, the right color temp, the extaction itself and how it blends in. So what we are looking for is criticism on how we can move things a little closer to reality with the new background. I've posted another attempt with a stucco background. I tried to match the luminosity levels with the original. The original was taken outside in what looks like open shade to his left. Therefore, I would assume a slight blue cast, even though the brick is red. Realizing the original may always be better, do you have any suggestions on how to improve my effort?

Just for interest I tried a slight drop shadow on my original attempt.

Cheers
Dave

...So what we are looking for is criticism on how we can move things a little closer to reality with the new background...

-You can say that again. :wink: We need to get back to the main subject on how to improve one's work.

- Your second one looks great, Duv. Except few sort-of-white dots(?) around him, lighting circumstances looks almost same to me.