This picture has a lot of potential. It's a beautiful picture. Here's the original and my first attempt at some color correction. Help me please. Thank you.

Sylvia

I gave this a try. Starting with your corrected image I took it into a program called Focus Magic and used a setting of 4. Then I changed the color mode from RGB to LAB and did some adjusting using curves on the a and b channel. How much to correct is always very subjective. Did a final color correction back in RGB and used the HUE/SAT to adjust the yellow and red. I am not a professional retoucher so my work flow my leave a lot to be desired.

dc

Sylvia, I focused on the color correction by doing a levels adjustment to cool yellow / green cast down (on the original). You did real well on the cracks and spots so I only did 60 secs of cleanup and then stopped.
Regards, Murray

Level adjustment, hue and saturation, a little cloning and hi pass filter

Wow! I'm totally amazed by the results you all achieved! I'm off to play around with some of your techniques. Thanks!!!

I did a slect color range then adjusted with hue saturation
retouched it quickly and did a little burning on the edges
hope this helps
zganie

Great picture.. too bad somebody put so much blush on the picture, strange?
Anyway i didn't clean up the image at all just played with the colors..
used the level to even out each channel..that almost did it..added a little hue/sat. to taste.

another way to get started:

If you want to try something interesting...duplicate the original picture layer.
on the copy layer go to BLUR / Average. it will turn it some goldish color.
The invert the color. (crtl+I). Change layer mode to color and lower opacity to 40-50% then add a hue/sat adjustment above the average layer Master, hue-8% sat +25%

or

Use variations (Image/adjustment/variations)
In default Midtones:
more blue, more red, more cyan, more red, more cyan..
you can fine tune it with the fine - course slider..once you get the hang of it....it's a fun tool.


Lasa

She's such a lovely subject, that I want my turn -- used Selective color to remove some of the yellow from the reds and reduced the cyan and yellow channels to remove the greenish cast in shadow areas. I love warm tones, so her hair comes out redder than some folks work ;)

I did separate work on reducing the red blush (again with Selective color on a masked area) and added an overall curve to add contrast.

Like CJ I had to have a go at this one.
Removed colour cast by sampling it and creating a layer filled with sample colour. Inverted this layer, changed blend to colour and faded down quite a bit.
Used clone and healing brushes on cracks etc.
Ran through Lucis at low level just to emphasize the shading, adjusted levels, sharpened slightly and cloned out some of the sharpening halos that looked too much.

Peter

Here is my try,curves,hue/sat.cloning.sharpen.

Bob

C.J. You are amazingly talented with this software! Do you teach a class?!!! She is gorgeous!

Sylvia

Sylvia, I think it's a combination of this lovely image and our color tastes running along the same lines -- I have been learning Photoshop for many years, and I still have a lot to learn compared to some other folks here, but I'm very happy that you like my version! :blush: :pleased:

As far as teaching, I do have some teaching background, and I will certainly try to share any skill or knowledge that I can claim with you or anyone else who is serious about learning. I have been very impressed with your continued eagerness to practice and learn, and your continued improvement.

I think that I've posted links for you before to Vikki Hansen's work, but we can never link too many times to someone with her skills.
http://www.pbase.com/vhansen/makeovers

Thank you for the encouragement, C.J. This forum is an incredibly friendly and supportive resouce for anyone working with this software or trying to learn this software.

Sylvia

agree aa, a great mob here

I switched to cymk mode and used levels on the individual channels which helped some then I went to RGB and used selective color adjustments. It seems to me that the original photo was tinted. Right at the hairline at the forhead it appears that there was a light brown pigment used to colorize the hair.

Beautiful background, Phil! I've never done level adjustments to the individual channels. This may be a good solution for another picture I'm struggling with. Thank you! Sylvia

Sylvia, I'd forgotten about a very nice resource available -- Vikki Hansen wrote an article that follows her process through the retouching of a portrait image. It was published by the on-line photo gallery, PBase in their first on-line magazine in pdf format. Her article begins on page 16 and runs thru page 18. Vikki is a working retoucher and is a stickler for a natural look in coloration and skin smoothing -- this would be a good article for you to download and keep if that is possible on your computer system.

http://i2.pbase.com/o1/mag/pbase_magazine_vol2_jul2005.pdf

Thank you, C.J. This was a very good tutorial. I tried it on another portrait I'm working on. I got lost when it was time for me to paint on the mask. I couldn't seem to make the mask the active layer for me to paint. Anyway, I'm sure I need to start over and go through the steps again slowly. I'm pretty sure I've made some mistakes in the instructions. But I love using the eyedropped and painting on a smoother skin tone. I was able to remove this child's dark circles under his eyes. I'm probably not suppose to add another picture to this thread but since we're on the topic, here it is. Thank you!

Sylvia, if you have not already worked through both of these RetouchPro tutorials on layer masks, please do -- one was written by Vikki Hansen, and the other by Flora.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=63

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=166

Your work looks good to me on the boy's face -- if I hadn't seen both photos, I wouldn't have noticed the difference. I question taking the smile line away from his mouth, however -- if I knew the boy, I might miss seeing "that look". ;)

I think you're right about the smile line. I went too far and I couldn't back up. I need to go through the tutorial by Flora. She is also very good and she is self-taught so there's hope for me. Thanks!

I think you're right about the smile line. I went too far and I couldn't back up. I need to go through the tutorial by Flora. She is also very good and she is self-taught so there's hope for me...

It was a good practice session for you; we all start off trying everything, and then try to learn when to stop (believe me, there are threads on that subject! ;) ) Learning to "back up" is one of the skills you will also pick up -- using adjustment layers and layer masks that can be "thrown away" or changed, backing up in your history palette, saving snapshots of each big step along the way so we can "go back" is all part of the process. I've lost a lot of my work over the years because I didn't get in the habit of saving snapshots etc.

You are quite right -- Flora is excellent, and has written excellent tutorials. Look also at her challenges and her posts helping people with a difficult image -- she explains what/how she did and we all learn a lot from those posts. Most everyone here is self-taught (except some of the "kids" who are working in the trade and grew up on computers at home and school), and you are doing fine. I had been working (ok, playing - I don't make any money with it) with Photoshop for years before this website was created, and I didn't learn to start looking at channels until after I signed on here. [Don't feel the need to jump into channels until you feel ready, but they're just a basic part of the image we look at, and it is important to learn to look at them and use them when there are color casts, or we need to make difficult selections, etc. I'm just making the point that we can use Photoshop for a lot of things even before we know how to work all its features and parts.]

Remember -- enjoy the journey while you are learning -- don't worry about not knowing everything -- no one knows it all, but we sure enjoy the parts that we know! :) :nod:

A colourized version...converted to monochrome via channel mixer and colour added back by curves adjustment.