When you get lemons........

[TheTexan]

Here is a picture that a friend asked me if I could make it better. After trying awhile to correct all of the tone and exposure problems not even being able to address the composure problems I gave up and did something different. He loves the effect and now wants one of each of his 6 kids. Hope you like it.

Tex

http://www.texramp.net/~dcsas/white.jpg

[CJ Swartz]

Way to go, Tex! You got the job done and got more orders to boot -- very nice image also!

[Ed_L]

Way to go Tex! That's using the old noodle. I've seen it happen before where someone was happy with something they didn't expect. Pass the lemonade please.

Ed

[[email protected]]

great job

Love the effect, it turned out very well, care to share your secrets with us ?

[Guest]

Tex, what a wonderful idea...just showing the face! Gotta try that one! Excellent results, btw!

Phyllis

[gland]

Great idea. Now thats being creative.

[Kathie]

RE: When you get lemons....

Hey Tex, did you you ever write up a tutorial on this project? It looks great! Would love to try your techniques.

Kathie

[June Curtice]

Wow, I'm impressed, both with your creative solution and the lovely results. This would be a great variation for wedding photos. Any chance you'll share the technique with us?

[DJ Dubovsky]

Looks like you found a great way out of a tough situation and it worked to generate more work for you. Not a bad call in my book. Looks great.
DJ

[Stephen M]

Nice work Tex.

When I read your original post, I thought the image you had to work with was going to be really poor...but I was more than pleasantly surprised.

Things may have been smoothed out a bit with the resize for web posting - but the original did not look too poor to me at first glance and would make a nice start point for a traditional colour correction and or minor retouch.

I would be more than happy to offer help in improving the original image with the more traditional look in mind, but I think you are onto a 'photo-art' winner here...so since you found another approach, it is perhaps best that you did not go down the standard path as you originally intended.

Stephen Marsh.

[TheTexan]

Sure,

Have at it. The main problem I ran across was the washout of the highlights on the cheeks and chin. I got a pretty good result with that but still there was alot of data loss so I could never really get the corrected highlights to match the midtones, data wise. Then after all that there was still the problem of the depth of field proximity to the background and the overall composure of the shot. My friend was just playing around and didnt take the shot too seriously so neither did I. Thats when I tried the different route. Using the high contrast to my advantage.

Id be interested to see your techniques to correct this image.


Tex

[Guest]

Corrected Image

I don't think this picture was that bad to start with. In the red channel the hair/background were muddy, in the blue channel the face, hair and background were muddy, but the green channel looked the best. I converted a copy to LAB mode and adjusted the lightness channel then copied it and pasted it on the original. Also pasted a copy of the green channel, then played around with opacity on those two, then used luminosity mode to blend back in the color.

The color needed some improvement, so I brushed over the face with a fuzzy brush at low opacity set to color mode to warm up the flesh tones. Did a little more tweaking with hue/sat and selective color here and there...can't recall the details. Finally adjusted levels and merged.

Now if you check each channel in RGB mode, all look decent, and the hair stands out from the background. Since the tones are all okay now, color adjustments at this point are easy to make.

Phyllis

[[email protected]]

please

So, are you going to share the steps you used in the first posting ? I think it is exceptually well done. Been hoping you would share. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Kathie]

yeah....do you want us to beg? Ok....PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Share your technique with us.....PULEEEEEEZE?
Kathie

[GOLDCOIN]

Did anyone else give this a try?

Can see now that I should have burned the face outline and mouth a little more......

Be glad to write up some steps .... It follow that new pencil sketch that Trimoon has showed us.