Photo Retouching - - Child Portrait Retouch.

MacBurg · #1 02-01-2008, 11:52 PM

Hi all,

I shot this image of a friends son a few weeks back, only just had a chance to start editing it. I've cleaned the image up a bit and fixed a few things like teeth and eyes, and am now looking for a direction to take the image.

Here is a preview of the image.

And you can download a large (73mb) version of the file for editing.

I was going to upload the image including the layers with the editing I had already done, but the image size was too large. I would appreciate seeing a few different edits of this image to give me some ideas on where to take it. I have a few ideas and will be working the image over the next few days and will post an update as it is ready.

Thanks again, Shaun.

.

Ziaphra · #2 02-02-2008, 03:57 AM

There really is NOT much you need to do to be honest...it's a great picture! Lightened his eyes and smile, added a couple more highlights over his face, made the colours pop a little more (made them warmer too as it was a little cold overall) and blurred the background more as it was quite distracting.

Edit: Added the NOT into my sentence coz it read all wrong! lol!

duwayne · #3 02-02-2008, 05:40 AM

Makes a great B&W

Swampy · #4 02-02-2008, 06:40 AM

McBurg... You really caught a Kodak moment shot! One I know you will treasure.

Your corrections were spot on, but as you say the background is distracting and you really want to make the boy pop off the page and be the focal point.

Actually, the background can work in your favor and you can create almost a studio background that leaves the outdoor setting ambiance to the shot.

1. I did a quick selection of the boy and masked him on a duplicate copy of the background.
2. Did an extreme gaussian blur to another copy of the background below the masked layer and added just a touch of sandstone texture.
3. Did a Distort>Lens Correction and added a slight vignette to the corners to further focus on his face.
4. Reduced the opacity of this blurred layer to about 65% and added a layer filled with black below. This helped tone down the hot spots of the light areas in the background.
5. On the masked layer, ran a Hue/Sat adjustment to bring up a little more red in the flesh tones and clipped this to the masked layer.
6. A Levels adjustment to lighten the masked layer just a tad more and clipped this to the masked layer.

Hope you like it.

Ziaphra · #5 02-02-2008, 07:59 AM

I just had to have another go at this!

nevie · #6 02-02-2008, 08:33 AM

I gave it a shot. I saturated the colors a little and did some dodging and burning. I also lightened his eyes and darkened the background.

nevie · #7 02-02-2008, 08:42 AM

I think duwayne's black and white idea is nice but I think its a little muddy. Also I think Swampy and Ziaphra did really nice jobs but I think the skin tone is a little red. Just some constructive criticism,hope you don't mind!

CaptainHook · #8 02-02-2008, 03:31 PM

Shaun ~ another Kiwi?

Nice photo!

MacBurg · #9 02-02-2008, 03:42 PM

Yeah, Kiwi born and bred, Waihi Beach is my home town, but currently living and working in Auckland, and you Captain Hook?

Just finishing a few adjustments and I will post an update on progress.

MacBurg · #10 02-02-2008, 05:10 PM

Thank you everyone for the constructive comments and your takes on the image. I maybe should have also fixed the skin tone, green reflections in the shadows, and also ran a noise filter before posting, but it slipped my mind. I also realized the need to tone down the hot spots in the blurred background as this distracts the eye quite easily, so thanks for posting the method for this.

The image was shot with a 5D and a 100mm 2.8, large softbox above and to camera left, with a kick light behind Jordan and to camera right, so there wasn't that much "Kodak" involved! Still every in focus image of a child playing is a good one.

Onto my edit so far, I ran Noise Ninja twice on two seperate layers, once for Jordan himself with less strength, then another high strength noise reduction with a lot of smoothing to help remove anything sharp from the blurred background. Next I used Selective Color to correct the green/yellow shadows on the face, then into LAB mode to give the greens and reds plenty of contrast and pop. Warmed the skin up a bit then added some contrast to the face. Also put in a mild vignette to help the focal point of the image. Still can't figure out how to tone down the hot spots in the background, tried a few different methods but it just doesn't look very good, Swampy could you please maybe explain your methods in a bit more detail? Maybe it was a bit easier because you had textured the background?

An update on my edit can be seen here -

http://shaunjquinlan.googlepages.com/editexample2

Unfortunately you loose a lot of quality converting to Gif, but it is a good way to compare an original image with an edited version.

Thanks again for the help, and looking forward to seeing a couple more versions, cheers Shaun.

Swampy · #11 02-02-2008, 05:38 PM

Mac, I darkened my background more than you did, but to calm those hot spots, I reduced the opacity of the blurred layer (to about 65%) then added that black layer (100%) underneath the blur layer. The reduced opacity of the blur layer lets more of that black show through the light spots. You can also play with the blending modes of the blur layer to see how the hot spots are affected by the black layer.