Suggestions

[GemGem]

Hi!

Can some of you great designers check out this montage and make suggestions on how to make it more realistic or enhance it a bit more. I feel it is missing something. I was thinking maybe some brushes, but not sure. I want to maintain her pregnancy as the focus.
Thank you!!
GG

[0lBaldy]

GemGem, welcome to RetouchPRO

I'm not a designer and certainly not great but I do have some suggestions that might help... or not..

cropped
Brightened background to match subject
brightened face, darkened sheet and stomach
added shadows
darkened corners on left of picture
darkened shield on gate
Darkening mostly done with history brush on a masked copied layer set at Multiply and faded to taste then fine tuned with the mask

This is just a quicky and should look much better on your higher resolution version

[GemGem]

Thanks Olbaldy! I will try some of your suggestions, I liked the darkening you did on the gate and the left side. . See how that goes. I have this vision for this montage; can't quiet explain it which is the hard part! all I can think of is softness..
I got tons of art books today at the library, hopefully that will spark something! LOL
Thanks 0lBaldy
GG

[Sweetlight]

My stab at it........

Duotone > Darken and Blur edges > Diffuse Glow >

[MiningArt]

The most beautiful part of a woman is her smile, so chose that for enhancement and made it the focal point of the image. For the second version I left the gate in and gave it a little extra detail.

[GemGem]

I am really liking these suggestions! I love the door MiningArt, gives it a sense of a new beginning, open arms kind of thing.. the door to love, etc. With that said.. I LOVE your take at it Sweetlight. More details please.
Thank you.

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by GemGem

I have this vision for this montage; can't quiet explain it which is the hard part! all I can think of is softness..
GG

Thanks for letting us play with your pretty Model!

For the glowiness I used an action set from Mike Finn "Mike Finns Portrait tools" within that set I used 'Soft Portrait', 'Fix Blowout', 'Highlight Flare', 'Flare', 'Misty Glow'

Added a light source

Softened the whole picture using an action called 'Basic skin fix' included in an action set called "KentC_skin_fix"

Ok I am done playing....

[GemGem]

0lBaldy, you can keep playing!! LOL. I love it. Can I use those actions for commercial use? Although it is a present for my customer, it will have my name on it. I am really diggin' the highlight flare. ! so exciting!

[Sweetlight]

Nice one Baldy

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by GemGem

Can I use those actions for commercial use? Although it is a present for my customer, it will have my name on it.

I am not qualified to say... but... my thinking is.. these particular actions are shortcuts to things we normally do in Photoshop: Gaussian blur, high pass, curves, motion blur, merge, etc... soooo me thinks it might be OK.... that said, I try to always give credit if possible because I think it is great that those who take the time to write all these actions are willing to share them with us!

Someone more qualified than I will have to give you a more definitive answer!

[Kraellin]

hi gemgem and welcome to RP.

without reading everyone else's posts here, the first thing i see is an out of focus focal point, the woman. photo art is dependent on the original photo, obviously, so, if the original is messed up in any way, then the resulting art is going to be that much more difficult to achieve.

now, i'm still working on this image, but you actually want to retouch or restore or both to an image before attempting any photo art. clean things up, dress them up and sometimes you'll find that art results just from that.

so, to start, i double this image size. it's too small like it was. i then hand focused the face, arms, belly and hands. i dont like to do this as hand focusing creates a LOT of artifacts. so, the next step is cleaning up the artifacts. for that i use clone, airbrush and push (smudge). i also added a little more color to her belly.

and that's as far as i've gotten tonight. i'll work on it some more later.

it's basically a good image. there's definitely something there to work with. i think it's going to need a crop somewhere down the road and the background is a bit busy and detracts from the main focus. you might want to blur the background a bit. i'll also add that one could completely remove the woman and put a new background in with her on top. i'm reminded of that famous picture of a woman and child in the water... renoir, wasnt it?

at any rate, have fun and again, welcome

[Kraellin]

ok, i've got a couple results i like on this, so far. i'll probably do more. i like the base image. it inspires.

i did as i said in my first post here, added focus to the woman and cleaned things up a bit. i then blurred the background and that lead to removing the fence/gate and cloning in some background. and, for whatever reason, i kept seeing her standing in water, so i used a filter forge filter to add my pooled water and then hand painted in the reflections with airbrush, and a bit with clone. i then cropped the overall. et voila'

[GemGem]

Hi Kraellin!!

Thank you for your ideas! I am doing a photo session next weekend and I am going to take your idea! I am going to try and have my pregnant beauty play in the water with her little belly. Thank you!!!
GG