Photo Advice Please

[CarnalSigh]

Hiya folks. He is 98, she is 77. They've been married for a long time and my photos of them are the first portraits they had taken in like 30 years. On the adjusted version, all I've done is brighten their eyes, her teeth, and did a light gaussian blur over the entire pic to soften their skin and blur out some of the background. I did no adjustments to the skin tones. Do you suggest anything else? Rework the photo if you care to. I'm interested in what I could have done better or different. Thanks.

[Littlecoo]

IMO your blanket use of gaussian blur on the subjects is not really a good idea, (you are trying to acheive softening effect, right?) It makes the image look out of focus. Perhaps a subtle diffuse glow or something similar may acheive the look you're after? I had a go at your image, trying to keep my adjustments subtle- mainly shadows/highlights adjustment to brighten up the image some more especially the background; levels adjustment layer to correct the overall colour; masked the gentleman's face and used colour balance there to reduce the red-magenta flushed skin; reduced the yellow of the lady's teeth using a curves adjustment layer; a little dodge and sponge (desaturate and low opacity) on the gent's eyes. In my 2nd attachment I desaturated the background about 70%.

[Daviskw]

Hi there

I isolated the background and darkend and blurred with lens blur.

I softened the skin with a sceen layer blurred and a multiply to counter. Then a hide all mask and painted to softness back in.

Butch

[Mike]

You did not do yourself any favors by posing them like this. First of all I would have picked a much better background without all the distracting things in it. Then I would have done a very different pose. I think with a little thought you could have positioned him so as to minimize the hand that is growing out of the side of his face. Some directional light would help with this.

Also remember that the only time you really want the subjects to look directly into the camera (especially one with a flash attached to it) is when they are getting a mug shot for some kind of ID card. Some nice directional soft light source would have made them look so much better and most likely cut your required time in PS down to almost nothing, and made for a better result than you are ever going to get using this image.

[Lasa]

I tried softening the image but I didn't like how it hazed this beautiful couple.
So I basically lightened them up via levels and hue/sat. mellowed a couple age spots..and dulled the background by desaturating it.
We should all look so good..!

Lasa

[geru]

I think that when people are of the age these two are softening their wrinkles and smoothing their skin makes no sense and actually detracts from the subjects in the photo.

The only thing I did:

levels adjustment

Color balance adjustment layer (to remove some of the gentleman's face redness) then brushed with black to bring everything else back to original

Ran a small amount of USM to sharpen and enhance their age lines, they've earned them.

[CarnalSigh]

Thx peeps......I got some good suggestions and ideas from your posts. Mike, fyi....he is very decrepit and unable to move hardly at all. The family wanted that pose from that angle, and she had to put her hand there to steady gramps. The house we were in is under construction. There are NO walls or better backgrounds to be had. It was one of those deals where it was take the opportunity I had, or not get any pic at all. Hence my request for advice on shining it up a bit.

[Duffy Pratt]

Both faces were way too magenta. The shirt is obviously white, but it's yellow in the picture. And her hair and his darker eyebrows are green. I did curves to get the faces and the shirt in balance, and did a slight sharpen in the Black channel.

But there was no way to pull the magenta out of the faces without boosting the green in the hair. So after the curve, I made a duplicate layer of the black channel and inverted it, then switched to LAB, pulled the magenta out of the hair using the inverted Black as a mask on the curve. First try at this got the darkest greens out of the hair, but there was still some green in the hair highlights, which I attacked with another A channel curve using Blend if sliders to limit by both to where the A channel was green or neutral, and where the luminosity was lighter than the shadows.

I made no local adjustments other than the Black channel mask.

(Edit: When I made the last changes in LAB, it moved the shirt to slightly magenta. I fixed that by moving the Blend if... sliders to exclude the whitest area.)

Duffy

[Lasa]

Duffy I like you're touch on it..very clean.
Lasa

[Daviskw]

Hi geru

From a person with many of those wrinkles believe me for themselves and family they don't need or want reminders of those badges of age... A softer picture is often desired.

I understand how photographers love the hard wrinkled true to life look but often families don't want it... I'll bet that is the case here... would be with me anyway... I see those damn wrinkles every day in the mirror and so do they... nice to be reminded of days gone bye.....after all that is the purpose of family photos...not to remind of infirmities and age.

Hmmmmmm....saying a lot about myself I think...oh well just another opinion.

Butch

[Cassidy]

have to agree with davis, blur the background only, and a levels adjustment

[CJ Swartz]

Can't resist those loving smiles -- did a Color Selection adjustment to tone down cyan and magenta in his skin tone and whiten his shirt, selected the background and did hue/sat adjustment to darken and desaturate somewhat, then decided to blur it and adjust the color to a midnite blue rather than just desaturate. I thought that the colors in the background pulled attention away from the couple a bit and wanted to reduce that effect. I lightened/brightened their eyes, and ran a high-pass sharpening but reduced it to about 55% and gave her a bit of softening.

Edit: I am always tempted to take more evidence of age off, and when I'm working on friends and relatives, no one complains out loud about looking younger. I would probably try to go "too far" and then scale back according to the wishes of the customer, if they ever brought it up.

[manta1900]

I would do just the following:

1) Color Correction
2) Contrast
3) Sharpening

[Gary Richardson]

Not got time to give too much detail, but did the following.

Extracted figures and sharpened them.
Blurred background with GB and applied graduated mask.
Desaturated reds to man's face, also added a touch of yellow with Color Balance to man's face, upped lighting and contrast on man's face.

Adjusted overall levels.

[geru]

Originally Posted by Daviskw

Hi geru

From a person with many of those wrinkles believe me for themselves and family they don't need or want reminders of those badges of age... A softer picture is often desired.

I understand how photographers love the hard wrinkled true to life look but often families don't want it... I'll bet that is the case here... would be with me anyway... I see those damn wrinkles every day in the mirror and so do they... nice to be reminded of days gone bye.....after all that is the purpose of family photos...not to remind of infirmities and age.

Hmmmmmm....saying a lot about myself I think...oh well just another opinion.

Butch

Lol, I've got a few wrinkles myself.

[KR1156]

i like the version you did Butch......i just tweaked the B & R channels a bit to neatralize the colors a bit, (yellow cast). Hope you dont mind, and nice job.

[Daviskw]

Hi KR

Not at all... that will teach me to listen to those skin tone snobs that say you sould have more yellow than magenta.. I thought it was a little too yellow myself

Butch

[Kraellin]

i did this in stages.

stage 1: crop. brighten and slightly contrast. mask his face and adjust colors with hue/sat.

stage 2. light retouch. remove small blemishes, etc.

stage 3. wrinkle reduction. didnt try to remove wrinkles, just reduce them a bit here and there.

stage 4. remove hand.

stage 5. remove background

stage 6. light usm and light clarify. image was slightly out of focus.

i dont entirely agree with mike about face-on shots like this. i think there is an acceptable class of family photos where you want the informal, face-on shot. you'll notice, though, that i removed the hand.

[Lasa]

Daviskw..this ones for you..(I still like the wrinkles)
Lots of liquify and clone/healing brush..I hope I haven't upset Carnalsigh,
if so I can remove extreme retouch...
Lasa

[skydog]

I really like your photo: candid/spontaneous shots of family. I used levels and curves to slightly adjust the colors and contrast. I used the unsharp mask to sharpen,

[dontbugme]

Unfortunately, the owner of this site doesn't allow you to upload a photo at a decent resolution. Had you been able to, this would be much easier to retouch.

As for most of you throwing in your two cents and giving it a go, I have a few suggestions:

• Retouching is subjective. Just because someone has a double-chin and acne doesn't mean it should be removed. As a photographer/retoucher you should think about the purpose for each photo and retouch it accordingly.
• Don't use blur. If you're not lazy and you want it a photo to look good, there are VERY few cases where you should actually use a blur filter (never the blur tool).
• Just because you learned how you can add a border/gradient/vignetting to a photo doesn't mean that you should. Again, VERY rarely does it work with a photo.
• Calibrate your monitor. Get a gray card. Get a spyder. Get an iMac or MacBook. Do whatever you need to do to get your monitor to display decent color.
• Keep some photos with good color handy for reference. Use them as a reference when you adjust color on a shot.
• Don't brighten/whiten/dodge eyes until they look like they belong in a porcelain doll. It's not very attractive, let alone realistic.

I'm sure I could go on for hours, but I'll keep it short to allow you to let those suggestions sink in.

Assuming that this photo is going to end up in the hands of their children, it shouldn't be retouched like it was going to be on the cover of Glamour magazine. Wrinkles, double-chins, and the background should all be left alone. Color correction, removing the distracting orange thing in the background, slight removal of redness in the eyes, curves adjustment, and removing the pimple from the man's chin is all that should be done to this photo-otherwise you're taking away from the preservation of the memory of these two people.

This is what it should look like, ideally: Link

PS: I've retouched thousands of portraits through various positions in photography studios, as well as my own retouching company.

[Duffy Pratt]

Retouching is subjective

This is what it should look like, ideally

Anyone else think these two statements are a little contradictory?

I agree with almost everything dontbugme says, but I sort of wish that I didn't, because s/he sounds so utterly arrogant. That said, I think the retouch job dontbugme did is quite good, even if it is a bit dark for my taste, and kills too much of the background (again for my taste).

I think dontbugme's version has aspects that are superior to my own correction. But I also think it's debatable whether dbm's version is "ideally" better than the attached, which is 54% my version, and 46% dbm's. What's best is something that reasonable minds can differ on.

Duffy

[sunfly]

Wow! Hearty congrats to your grand parents... :-) I love grandparents.... they are diamonds.

Elements: Duped, level adjust, colour curve adjust, cloning and healing, tooth whitening and brights removed, grampa's eyes brightened, background blurred and blended in, final colour adjusting and overlay, flattened and cropped.

Sherry

[Kraellin]

ah, the differences. i agree with dontbugme on most points also. and i would call his retouch a stage 1 or stage 2 retouch. very clean, very well done. however, some clients dont want to remember people as they are/were; they want the fantasy. they dont want to remember the wrinkles and age and hollow eyes. they want the ideal. and as mike pointed out, things like "the hand that is growing out of the side of his face." can also be handled. and so, i would temper dontbugme's advices with "unless the client asks for it".

[skydog]

I'm not sure if there is a correct answer. As I said before, it all depends on what the client or you personally want. One nice thing about this site is that one can learn many techniques and then try what one desires to the photo. With regards to dontbugme I like what was done with the color but I still feel the photo is "flat"...but that it just my opinion and what my eyes see.

[dontbugme]

Haha...it is a bit contradictory when you separate it out like that Duffy, but I'm sure you got what I meant when it was in-context (subjectivity applies to the purpose).

Yeah everybody will have a different opinion on the final photo, but I had to show what I meant by leaving the memory alone. Sure you can brighten the background, but it isn't exactly a glorious background so I wouldn't want to draw attention to it any.

Skydog, as far as feeling the photo is flat, if you are talking about the lighting, then you'd have to talk to the photographer on that one. Retouching is also called touch-up. When you do a touch-up on something, you don't overhaul the whole thing and start from scratch. If you wanted to render different lighting on a photo you would need to either A) do ALL shadows and highlights by hand or B) overlay the pixel data onto a 3D object and then cast light onto the 3D objects, then get your angle right and flatten it down to 2-dimensions.

however, some clients dont want to remember people as they are/were; they want the fantasy. they dont want to remember the wrinkles and age and hollow eyes. they want the ideal.

You're right, some clients don't want that. But having worked in retouching for years I can tell you with confidence that the majority, by a large degree, of adult children do not wish to have their elderly parents smoothed out to look like porcelain dolls.

[maureeno]

Originally Posted by Gary Richardson

Not got time to give too much detail, but did the following.

Extracted figures and sharpened them.
Blurred background with GB and applied graduated mask.
Desaturated reds to man's face, also added a touch of yellow with Color Balance to man's face, upped lighting and contrast on man's face.

Adjusted overall levels.

My opinion, your version is spot on! Perfect, the eyes are lively, colours are splendid and the couple have the stage!

Maureen