Anniversary picture - need feedback

[timmy1729]

Hello everyone!
It's been forever since I've been able to post on here! Today is my 2nd wedding anniversary and I took a few pics at the local park. I am really trying to become as good at retouching photos as possible. I would love to get some feedback on one of my pics from today. The original was very dull since it was cloudy. I'm surprised my little tripod stood up to the wind. It was VERY windy!
Is this a good beginner's attempt? What would you do differently? How can I improve on this?

[Sweetlight]

Hi,

Not a bad go of it, just stick to it and it will get easier.

I took the liberty of working it again for you.

It appears that your beginning image was a bit underexposed and that is why the image has that light, flat feeling to it. In most images you will probably want to make sure you have a D-Max (maximum density) or a true black. You can work on that with the black eyedropper on the curves menu. Find an area that should be black and click on it. It will probably make the image a bit dark so you can fade the curves.

Your image is a little soft which is mostly because of the resolution limit you have to upload at. When I have a soft image that I want to salvage I create a duplicate layer and apply whatever soft-focus technique you choose. Let the whole image be a bit soft then erase away the faces. This will make the important elements of the image (the faces) look sharper.

Hope this helps.

Chris

[unimatrix001]

The after picture i think is better but it looks like you over saturated the blue some. I used the before pic and just hit the auto levels no other adjustments.

[timmy1729]

I had forgotten that I had set the black eye-dropper on levels to 12,12,12 and the white one to 243,243,243 because I was playing with an old pic in bad shape. I got that from one of the tutorials here. I forgot to set it back. I’ll give it another go this afternoon after setting them back to true black and true white. I’m going to have to train my eyes to be more sensitive to things like this.

Using the Auto-Levels was mentioned. Are the Auto-Levels and other Autos usually a good start? Or is it still best to do those things manually? The Auto-levels appears to have done a great job. I’ll have to check it on the original this afternoon.

Can someone suggest a workflow for me to try on this one? I’m always looking for general steps to follow. Should I always use Levels first? What is good to do next? Etc. That kind of thing. I’m trying to move my mind away from being so process oriented, but it isn’t easy.

[unimatrix001]

the autos are a good place to start. Sometimes they work and sometimes not. the next thing i do is look at the different channels and see what they have to offer. I the photo needs repair other then color correction i will repair all the damage first then do the color correction and noise removal as a final process.

[philbach]

Well I think the most important thing is to crop the photo and focus on you two. I also used levels to increase the contrast some.

[NYBOB]

My try, levels,clone out tree & pole around head,Swampy's blown out sky fix,sharpen & crop.

Bob

[Cupcake]

Levels, color, crop, & fixed the sky.

[klassylady25]

I did the basic; adjusted each level manually. Removes that over saturated appearance.