April 05 Contest Votes

[TwinbNJ]

Have to agree this was very difficult as there are many variations in crop and style. First round of elimination was the horizontal BG not being straight, unfortunatly there were several I liked but the BG was not fixed. Next skintone and clearity of the image. Then focus on the bride and groom and composition. Here are my picks:

1 - 1Stlile
2 - righthanddesign
3 - Johnmc
4 - grafx
5 - alteredimage

[philbach]

A fun contest. One thing that I noticed is that on the Bride's neck There is very little definition of (the Sterno-cleido-mastoid) muscle that would look more realistic. My favorites are:
1.) Right Hand Design
2.) T Paul
3.) Catlin
4.) Chrishoggy
5.) Soleah

[JohnMc]

Ok...I basically went through each and initially looked for anything 'unbelievable' in the image...if there was any flaw in the facial features, I had to hit 'next'...instant elimination. The rules of the contest had some mandatory facial changes, so this got interesting with people's choice of smiles for the bride. One thing I noticed right off was that while many people borrowed the open-mouthed smile from one of the reference pics, they didn't drop her jaw just a bit to adjust for the open-mouthed smile...so it looks like she has a huge mouth and a funny-looking chin. I probably compensated a bit too much in mine, but I'm not going to worry about it now!

Color was the next thing, and in some where people tried to get too radical with skin color alterations, they ruined the shadowing or depth of the contours of their anatomy...instant elim. there too. Some looked to 'painted' and un-natural.

Compostition was next, and there were some good ideas here, some not very 'designed' looking or balanced or too artsy-fartsy, but a few were well composed but had other flaws that eliminated them for me.

Here's my choices-

1. Jaime - My only bone to pick was the subjects didn't quite 'blend' into the background...the top of the groom's head stood out...a little shadowing adjustment would get it there. Also the color of the background and the subjects wasn't quite in harmony.
2. righthanddesign - color was a bit off for some reason, but nice.
3. Soleah - technical side was good, color was a bit washed out.
4. Caitlin
5. Dreamypix

[Jaime]

Thanks Caitlin for the help of the web album.

These are my votes:

Soleah. A conservative, crisp and pleasant retouch with a very well done color noise reduction. The skin tone is nice, but a little dim.

Righthanddesign. God cropping with a clever rearrange of the background. The skin tone can be improved.

Caitlin. God retouching of the face of the bride. Background not straighten.

Grafx. One of the best retouching of the groom face.

1stlitle. One of the best and warm color skin. The image can be improved with more sharpening.

Congratulations to all the participants and please excuse me my poor English.

[1STLITE]

Man this was hard. There were alot of great efforts put into these entries. It was hard to narrow it down, but I have come up with a list of 5 that I feel did the best job without going overboard on the artsy side.

1) Altered Image - this was so beautiful, even though it was a bit artsy, I liked it very much. Would have been an even easier first place to me if it had been cropped differently. Lovely picture!
2) Caitlin - Also very beautfully done, again the only issue I had was the cropping, but otherwise absolutely well done.
3) Soleah - Outstanding, and were it not for the color issues I would have put this first. It was just too washed out. Still beautiful though.
4) righthanddesign - Yet another beautiful entry, but the dark reddish skin tone was a drawback for me.
5) JohnMc - Lovely, but little too contrasty, especially in the skin areas for me - the darks too dark and lights too light, kept this one from ranking higher for me.

There were several others I liked as well, and some interesting, though not photo-realistic, effects that I woudl love to see step-by-steps for. Congratulations to everyone for such beautiful work.

Dawn

[grafx]

Here is my line-up:

1.) Righthanddesign - looks best overall with composition and retouching.

2.) JohnMc - really nice just a little dark on the subjects.

3.) Dreampix - smile on bride just a tad too large, other than that gorgeous.

4.) TPaul14 - most realistic of the head swaps.

5.) Endymi0n - really creative handling of the light from the stained glass.

Great job to EVERYONE! It is amazing how different all the results have been.

[ogee]

As a neophyte, I found this contest both difficult and fun to do and to judge. Thanks to Caitlin for the gallery.
1. I eliminated any that didn’t conform to the rules (smile, five o’clock shadow, etc.) or in my opinion no longer looked like a photo.
2. For me, applying the smile was the hardest task. Not only did the smile have to look natural to viewers but it had to look like the bride to the bride...she would immediately recognise the left side/ right side of her mouth and I don’t think that she would want a photo around when she celebrates her 50th anniversary if she knows it is wrong. This eliminated a few more.
3. I then eliminated those which, in my opinion, had the couple “over-produced” making it look like a manipulated photograph.
4. Now to my personal taste...to crop to the couple or to leave it a full length photograph? I tried to put myself at the couple’s 50th Wedding Anniversary (I know, optimist!) But instead of “my grandparents are celebrating... and this the only photo of their wedding can you repair it”, I was doing the repair now for 50 years hence. If this was the only photo of their wedding what information should it contain to show future generations? I decided that:
a. The bride would like to show everyone her dress...all of it.
b. A sense of place would be important to preserve, so the vertical elements of the background would be needed.
These two factors then entered into my judging and I decided that the best version should be a full length portrait that also had a sense of place. Because there were several excellent entries that were cropped, I couldn’t exclude them.
5. Finally an observation. Again imagining it is 50 years later, I didn’t want the groom to look like he was drunk the night before (or indeed still), so in addition to removing his 5 o’clock shadow, I attempted to fix his dishevelled tie and collar. I was surprised to see that very few others attempted to deal with it.
Here are my selections:
1. jaime It was very difficult to find fault with this one- perhaps a tad too crisp and the teeth too white, but I thought of the full length shots this one dealt with everything well including the groom’s upper lip.
2. caitlin If this had been a full length shot it would have been the winner. I thought Caitlin did the best job on the faces.
3.chrishoggy Did a better job on the groom’s upper lip than did Soleah
4. soleah Liked the atmosphere, but perhaps just a little too much of it.
5. Racc%20Iria Nice feeling.

[Doug Colwell]

1 righthanddesign - facial features natural and sharp, good composition and great tones.

2 soleah - like the full length formal portrait, facial features and tones look great. Subjects a bit dark.

3 alteredimage - Composition is great, and all the technicals look good except groom's face looks a bit blotchy (too light lights, too dark darks).

4 1stlite - again facial features natural and sharp, crooked window is slightly distracting, subjects a little dark and tiny bit too much eye reflection. High res look.

5 Caitlin - Very nice faces and colouring, but the landscape format really emphasizes the tilted bg.

[T Paul]

This wasn't and easy decision my any means...

I looked very hard at the couple and wanted natural looking results especially with the added features.

1. Soleah
2. Cedwar1
3. Jaime
4. Denschneider
5. Chrishoggy

[ourprissymiss]

This was hard but I narrowed it down to my fav 5.


1)soleah
2)Jaime
3)righthanddesign
4)wooden_bender
5)caitlin

[soleah]

First of all, I just want to say that this contest forced me to experiment and appreciate the use of various adjustment layers, something that I’m too lazy to use or understand before. The comments on my work thus far, are very helpful. Next time I know what to do.

I approached the judging of the entries not as a retoucher, but as the client. No matter how beautifully done the photo, I wouldn’t hang it on my wall if the bride doesn’t look like me.

When I see a photo with me in it, the first thing that I look for is myself, a perfectly natural reaction. “Do I look good?” or in this case “Does it look like me?”

Many have done a great job with cleanup, color, composition and all. However, only a few have successfully made a seamless retouch on the face particularly on the bride’s smile. This is not an easy decision since it eliminated some of the work that I really like.

Here’s my top 5:
1. cedwar
2. philbach
3. Caitlin
4. alteredimage
5. gary richardson

[T Paul]

Not counted for votes, but this is how the groom voted:

1. woodbender
2. TPaul
3. 1stlite
4. jaime
5. cdudding

[T Paul]

The winner of the April Contest and the recipient a copy of The Art of Photoshop by Daniel Giordan - donated by Sams Publishing is…..

RightHandDesign!!


CONGRATULATIONS!

Please feel free to include some of your steps in the April 05 Discussion thread. And this goes for all the participants! Now that the contest is over, please feel free to add your steps/techniques.

Top 5
1. RightHandDesign
2. Jaime
3. Soleah
4. Caitlin
5. Alteredimage

P.S. Want to know your exact ranking, just send me a PM!

[T Paul]

Votes from the Bride:

1. soleah - i like the lighting and the zoom. we look a littl too retouched (nobody's skin is that smooth), but not we're not fuzzy. there is something slightly unusual about my mouth although i can't really tell what.

2. tpaul14 - i like the lighting - seems warm and bright, and the zoom is good and we don't look so retouched, but there's something different about our faces.

3. thomasfoo - this one still looks like us. our faces, features, expressions, etc... but is kinda fuzzy

4. wooden_bender - i like the idea behind this one, the colored stained glass with the rest black and white, but the oval is a little odd and my features look off somehow

5. damski - again i like the idea with this one, but it's pretty fuzzy