I am a rookie when it comes to PSE. I played with several features but I still don't have what I want. My biggest complaint is with their skin tone. They both have a naturally tan looking complection which isn't present in these pictures.

I do have the original RAW file. The picture was taken with a Canon Digital Rebel with a 70-200mm f/2.8L lense with a focal length of 95mm and an f-stop of 2.8 to lower the depth of field. I did not use a flash.

Let me know what you think I should change.

Tom

Do you mean something like this?

I masked the faces, did a curve adjustment, a selective color adjustment, then blend it MULTIPLY

Then adjusted levels and Hue/Saturation of the entire pic and sharpen everithing but the faces.

I did quite a bit to get this:

I duplicated it and blurred the bottom layer at about 3% strength and darkened it slightly, then erased the background from the top layer...this helps the girls to 'pop' out more. I also adjusted the highlights/midtones/shadows of the top layer. Then I merged the layers and did another levels adjustment...this was just to my taste though.

Oh and I cloned away those little sticks in front of their faces!

If this is the tan color... all you have to do is:
1) Go to "Color Balance"
2) Adgust RGB to R:-9 G:4 B:6

and voila!

Triske, welcome to RP.

i kind of liked the brighter overall settings. so, i think i'd just select the faces and apply a hue/sat layer to change them how you wish. easy enough to add a bit more red or saturation.

Thank you all very much for your input, I will go back and play with the raw files and see what I can do.

Tom

In my opinion your whitepoint is set too blue. It is causing a bluish cast over their faces. Fix that in Raw first. You may want to warm the whole thing up while you are in raw.

Hi Triske,

For me, when you say naturally tan, I think of my daughter who is olive complectioned....... the thing I notice most about her skin is the lack of pink in her skin tone....... which I just love...... when she was born I remember thinking..... 'Wow...... she's already tan and she's gonna love that".....

So here are my steps:

Image > Mode > Lab

Layer > New > Layer and change the blend mode to Soft Light

Image > Apply Image and make sure Layer says 'Background' > Channel > A and Blend > Soft Light

Image > Apply Image make sure Layer still says 'Background' > Channel > B and Blend > Soft Light

Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and moved top slider barely to the right for the peachiness hue

Image > Mode > RGB

Layer > Flatten Image

Image > Adjustments > Selective color and choose Neutral

Now slide the Cyan slider a tad to the right to add a little more cyan to the neutrals........ or you may like selecting the Reds and move the Cyan slider to the right to add more Cyan to your reds...... either way looked very similar.....

Hope that helps a little!

Beth

Hi Triske,

I'm new here myself and this is my first post of any kind. Of the two attached versions of your files, as a photographer, I prefer the second, the first is a little overexposed.
While you may be new to PS or PSE, your greatest control for this image is with your Raw converter, not PS since you shot Raw. I would agree with blue dog's comments regarding white point (white balance set too cool). Try a "warmer" temp.-higher number- for the white balance. Avoid pushing the black point (shadows) too high as you'll loose detail in the shadow areas. Also, high contrast, while desirable in many types of photographs, is not particularly well suited for this type portrait.

Using the second image and the Shadow/Highlight controls in PS, I opened the shadows a little (note detail in hair). Also, tweaking the highlights and lowering the mid-tone contrast slightly added more color back to the ladie's faces.

John