What should I do?

[717Newbie]

I would like this image to have a better look. (I know it's a poor image) but it means so much to me How can I give a dreamy look? (you know that professional wedding look) Can some of the experts give me an idea how to start? I also included a zip file with the original if anybody wants to play around with it........

Thank you in advance.

[Flora]

Hi 717Newbie,

Welcome to RP!

I'm not artistically oriented, and I know that, here, there are many who could do magic things with your picture .....

...But just to get an indication of your idea of "dreamy look? (you know that professional wedding look)" .... is this more or less what you had in mind?

[Leah]

It kind of depends what you meant by "that professional wedding look"...

I started - purely based on personal experience - from the point of view that for wedding shots you generally want to keep the existing background since you spent hours obsessing over the details of the setting when planning the wedding (extracting onto a different background, as Flora has done, is definitely another way to go if you aren't bothered about the existing setting). In the photo as taken the bright red curtain and the green 7-Up bottle were distracting attention from the bridal couple because of their colour, so I got rid of those (an alternative might have been to throw the background into monochrome). A couple of the chairs are kind of distracting with their position too, but it would be a big job to remove those seamlessly so I left them (if you had other pictures of the area, that might make it easier to remove the chairs).

Next I reduced the harsh shadows to make the photograph look like it was taken with a more diffuse light source - that automatically softens the overall feel quite a bit.

Then I played around with Xero's Radiance and SoftMood filters, plus a little Gaussian Blur, layered over each other in different blend modes, and copied back in some of the detail of the white dress which had got blown out a bit with the various filters. And I used Levels to darken the background slightly to focus attention on the couple.

If this does happen to be what you're looking for I worked on the original and have it saved at that size too.

[Duv]

I thought by darkening the edges and warming the tones, it would provide a dreamier more intimate setting. Used Gothic Glow.

Cheers
Duv

[Marc]

"Professional look"... hm, I am not very experienced with marrying pictures...

Anyway, to give it a smoother look, I duplicated the layer, applied a gaussian blur (9 pixel) and masked the new layer, so it does not kill the details.
Set the layer to "lighten" mode and set oppacity to 52%.

Hope it comes near to what you want to achieve?

[717Newbie]

Thank you so much for sharing your ideas........ I know that everybody have so much talent THAT IS EXACTLY WHY I CAME HERE!

Thank you again.....

[T Paul]

Another option is to replace the background. This was a quick attempt to show you the difference a new background can make. With a little time and by experimenting with different levels of blurring you can really create a romantic photo.

Soft Focus Images:

1. Select and replace background (optional)
2. Create a duplicate layer
3. Apply guasssian blur to the duplicate layer. You will have to experiment with the radius to determine how much blurring you want. A smaller radius number results in less blur in the image. If you click on the “Preview” checkbox, you can see the changes as you move the radius slide.
4. Determine the final amount of soft focus. On the duplicate layer lower the opacity to your desired amount. The lower the opacity the more of the original sharp image will be revealed. You should set the slide to whatever looks good to your eye.