Is it Toning? HighKey?

[picart]

Hello everybody.
I would appreciate any ideas on how the effect in this image is reached.
Is it toning, highkey? And such clear colors.

http://www.tinyurl.pl?gLSJby4O

[flexmanta]

? It's plain photography, no effects there. He just made some decisions when processing the RAW (maybe camera profile, some contrast here and there...).

[Jerryb]

hi,
it always difficult to determine what else did... smiling...

I probably out in left field,, just novice, but I believe there was a fair amount of editing that took place...
1. looking at the mirror. the girl is sharp but the case , chair, window, curtain should normally be sharp but it all blurred.soften so to me either the bluring tool or some other tool to achieve the same effect oh they probably masked her and then apply the bluring/softening effect .
2. looking at the girl that looking at the mirror... i think what they did here was change the tonal quality of her , her shirt is almost a orange where in the mirror it a nice red looking at the channels it to me is really obvious... , also the hair there a fair amount of color there. compared to the the girl in the mirror....

3. in fact on the firl in the mirror ia m wondering if they just copy and pasted here from another shot... into the mirror..

like i said just novice and might be in left filed.. smiling

[dkcoats]

Originally Posted by Jerryb

looking at the mirror. the girl is sharp but the case , chair, window, curtain should normally be sharp

Huh? Why would you expect this? Everything in this photo that should be in focus is, and everything that shouldn't be isn't. It didn't take any manipulation to achieve this.

Why do people think everything is Photoshop? Sometimes a photograph is just a photograph.

[Jerryb]

hi,
first of all I don't believe everything is photoshopped, although an awfull lot of stuff out there is... smiling... and there many i can't tell the difference... more than once on here i thought something was real but others was able to see that it was photoshoppped...

why do i expect ? because with a mirror everything in that flat mirror should be the same degree of sharpness.. that the reall world, that the physics!!! for one object in the mirror to be sharp and the rest of the background in the mirror to be blur/soften leads me to believe that it been edited... it been edited in order enhanse the sharpness and clairty of the gal in order to draw your eyes to the gal!! that a common technique , keep the central object sharp and back ground fuzzy/blurry/soft...

now grant you they could have taken real pictures.. ie: taken a out focus picture and then bring in the gal and take another picture but with things in focus and then just photoshop and composit the 2 pictures!!

Originally Posted by dkcoats

Huh? Why would you expect this? Everything in this photo that should be in focus is, and everything that shouldn't be isn't. It didn't take any manipulation to achieve this.

Why do people think everything is Photoshop? Sometimes a photograph is just a photograph.

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by Jerryb

why do i expect ? because with a mirror everything in that flat mirror should be the same degree of sharpness.. that the reall world, that the physics!!!

No, it doesn't work that way, you actually have to focus "through" the mirror. They're using an open aperture for shallow depth of focus. To get that curtain (seen in the mirror) in focus you'd have to rack the focus out and actually focus farther out, you can't just focus on the plane of the mirror and exepect everything in it's view to be sharp.

In this case, they are using an aperture that gives them roughly 12-18" of focus. By focusing on the reflection of the mirror that is about 12-18" from the mirror, the depth of focus just coincidentally includes some of the mirror frame. But if their aperture only allowed 5" of focus, even the mirror frame would be out of focus, and she in the foreground, and the curtain in the background, would be even less in focus.

I'm not doing a good job of explaining this, but the distances covered through the mirror are real. If you stand 18" in front ofa mirror with a camera and want a sharp self portrait in the mirror, you don't focus the lens18"in front of you(to the mirror surface) you set it 36" to cover the distance to the mirror and then 18" back to your reflection.

[flexmanta]

Originally Posted by Jerryb

because with a mirror everything in that flat mirror should be the same degree of sharpness.. that the reall world, that the physics!!!

That is very very wrong.

[Jerryb]

hi,
your forgetting one thing... in the mirror the girl, the background curtains and desks etc... are all the same distance from the camera hense the same degree of sharpenss!!! yes there is a little angle but not that much to make a effect.... plus if you look at the left side of the the girl in the mirror if what you say was tru that part should at least be sharpas her, not the same degree of fuzziness as on the other side of the mirror...

other things about the image vertical lines... both mirrors are at different angles,,, the mirrors in relation to the doors are odd.... i am not saying there false but suspcious... could be just a poor camera angle

Originally Posted by Flashtones

No, it doesn't work that way, you actually have to focus "through" the mirror. They're using an open aperture for shallow depth of focus. To get that curtain (seen in the mirror) in focus you'd have to rack the focus out and actually focus farther out, you can't just focus on the plane of the mirror and exepect everything in it's view to be sharp.

In this case, they are using an aperture that gives them roughly 12-18" of focus. By focusing on the reflection of the mirror that is about 12-18" from the mirror, the depth of focus just coincidentally includes some of the mirror frame. But if their aperture only allowed 5" of focus, even the mirror frame would be out of focus, and she in the foreground, and the curtain in the background, would be even less in focus.

I'm not doing a good job of explaining this, but the distances covered through the mirror are real. If you stand 18" in front ofa mirror with a camera and want a sharp self portrait in the mirror, you don't focus the lens18"in front of you(to the mirror surface) you set it 36" to cover the distance to the mirror and then 18" back to your reflection.

[pch at large]

At the risk of confirming my ignorance, I tend to agree with Jerryb. The girl in front definitely looks pasted in to me, and not particularly well. The second reflection bothers me too, in that there's a difference in the skin tones on her arm. More telling to me though is that there is a soft edge in the second reflection where it meets the edge of the first mirror. Surely, that should be a hard edge, with the first mirror blocking our view of the second....?

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by Jerryb

hi,
your forgetting one thing... in the mirror the girl, the background curtains and desks etc... are all the same distance from the camera

Huh??? You think she and the curtains are the same distance from the mirror?

It's really not worth going further until we can agree on the basics.

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by pch at large

At the risk of confirming my ignorance, I tend to agree with Jerryb. The girl in front definitely looks pasted in to me, and not particularly well. The second reflection bothers me too, in that there's a difference in the skin tones on her arm.

It's possible that different areas of the picture got different color treatements without it meaning that the shot was composited. However, my theory is that the room is lit with a mixture of daylight (cool) and incandescent (warm), and her back is being more directly lit by the warmer incandescent overhead light, while her front is getting more mixed light.

More telling to me though is that there is a soft edge in the second reflection where it meets the edge of the first mirror. Surely, that should be a hard edge, with the first mirror blocking our view of the second....?

Not sure what you mean by your last sentence, but that diffusion on the mirror looks more like a de-silvering of the mirror itself (I forget the exact term). I have old mirrors like that that show the same deterioration at the edges.

[KTG]

Photoshop pilpul

[pch at large]

I do understand your point, Flashtones, about the de-silvering on the edges of old mirrors. In this case though, that de-silvering would be occurring very much in the middle of the second mirror. If that's not the case, the hard edge of the first mirror should make a hard edge against the second, not a soft one. The girl in front still looks like a bad paste job to me, as well, with inconsistencies in the edges along her sweater and around her hair.

Of course, I've been wrong before, according to my ex-wife.... :-)

[seattle-light]

Dear Jerryb...

Focal distance is based on the distance that light travels to get to the camera. So it's the distance from the camera to the mirror plus the distance from the mirror to the thing(s) being reflected. The camera isn't capturing the surface of the mirror, it's capturing the light that's reflecting off of the surface of an object that is then reflected off of the surface of the mirror that is reaching the camera.

So if you're standing three meters from a mirror shooting a picture of your own reflection then you need to be focusing at six meters (as the light has to make a round trip -- from your camera's point of view, your reflection is three meters behind the mirror). If you focus on the mirror's glass, then your reflection is going to be three meters away from the focal plane of the image (and your reflection is probably not going to be way out of focus, unless you've got some very powerful strobes and an incredibly narrow aperture).

If everything shot in a mirror would be equally sharp then lots of photographers would be shooting everything in a mirror to get that overall sharp look (the easy Dave Hill effect) -- just by focusing on a mirror (imagine the people at Canon and Nikon who spend their careers trying to make autofocus systems that work kicking themselves for not thinking to use a mirror to focus everything). If only things were so simple. If it were the case, you'd be able to see from here to eternity in a mirror with perfect clarity. Physics is somehow more complex than that. A mirror is quite different from a painting or a poster on a wall.

You need to get out and shoot some pictures to test out theories like this. It's one of the first assignments you get in a photography course -- reflections -- comes right after exposure and depth of field. It's the kind of misunderstanding that could seriously undermine the effectiveness of your work on a real project.

Don't sweat it though. You are not the only person who is thinking like that. We all have a lot to learn. Luckily, we don't have to understand all the physics. But in retouching it actually helps to have an effective understanding of how reflections and shadows work. You can't fake them convincingly without spending some time observing them closely out in the in the real world.

Hope you are doing well. Take care. Alan.

[flexmanta]

HAHAHA... if the photographer was reading this post he would be laughing so hard "compositing? I just pressed the button on my camera!".

Guys, back to basics. Get a camera and learn the basics of optics and depth of field.

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by pch at large

I do understand your point, Flashtones, about the de-silvering on the edges of old mirrors. In this case though, that de-silvering would be occurring very much in the middle of the second mirror.

No, it it tends to happen near the edges, I guess it's an oxidation and the air gets in at the seams, or something like that.

If that's not the case, the hard edge of the first mirror should make a hard edge against the second, not a soft one.

I'm having trouble to discern which mirrors and edges you mean, but because the focus is racked to the distance of the lens to the mirror PLUS the distance from the mirror back to her face, the near surfaces are out of focus and the far one's are in focus. See how the near blue beads are too close to be in focus, but their reflection in the far mirror, is in?

The girl in front still looks like a bad paste job to me, as well, with inconsistencies in the edges along her sweater and around her hair.

I just don't see the inconsistencies. Look at the reflection, you see the red shirt turning orange in the lowered shoulder. The girl's right arm is at the exact same angle, as is the angle of her shoulders, and the styling of her hair.

Maybe I'm the one missing the point. What exactly do you think is composited, the girl in the foreground, her reflection, or both?

In any case, sure seems like a lot of work to get a snapshot feel that would be just as easy to get with a snapshot.

But I'll stop arguing about it, I don't know either.

[andyong]

i think it's pure openwide aperture shot..

[goolug]

Lightroom is the answer.

[wojciech]

Precisely vibrance, exposure, fill light, a little clarity and then combining it in PS.