Mother & Daughter or Why I love my D30

Richard Liechty said:

Probably my only regret is that I did not take it at a lower ISO
setting.

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Richard Liechty said:

Took this picture the other night and am quite pleased with the
results. This was an impromptu picture taken in our bathroom (of
all places) with the door as the backdrop. The only lighting was
four incandescent bulbs over the sink, no flash. Digital Darkroom:
levels, contrast, some sharpening, and slight crop for 5X7 frame.



Probably my only regret is that I did not take it at a lower ISO
setting.

Camera Model: Canon EOS D30
Firmware: Firmware Version 1.01
Date/Time: 2001.10.21 20:16:00
Shutter speed: 1/180 sec
Aperture: 2.0
Exposure mode: Av
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
ISO: 400
Lens: 50 mm (Canon 50mm f1.4 -- I love this lens!)
Focal length: 50.0 mm
Focus point: [Centre]
Image size: 2160 x 1440
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal

Here is a link to a full size image ( 1.2M)
http://members.home.net/theliechtys/images/MotherAndDaughterFullSize.jpg

Comments welcome,

Richard

Click to expand...

Eric said:

Richard Liechty said:

Took this picture the other night and am quite pleased with the
results. This was an impromptu picture taken in our bathroom (of
all places) with the door as the backdrop. The only lighting was
four incandescent bulbs over the sink, no flash. Digital Darkroom:
levels, contrast, some sharpening, and slight crop for 5X7 frame.



Probably my only regret is that I did not take it at a lower ISO
setting.

Camera Model: Canon EOS D30
Firmware: Firmware Version 1.01
Date/Time: 2001.10.21 20:16:00
Shutter speed: 1/180 sec
Aperture: 2.0
Exposure mode: Av
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
ISO: 400
Lens: 50 mm (Canon 50mm f1.4 -- I love this lens!)
Focal length: 50.0 mm
Focus point: [Centre]
Image size: 2160 x 1440
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal

Here is a link to a full size image ( 1.2M)
http://members.home.net/theliechtys/images/MotherAndDaughterFullSize.jpg

Comments welcome,

Richard

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Brian Mottershead said:

Russell: probably I'm violating some canon of politeness on this
forum (I notice very few criticisms here) but I think your soft
focus version is absolutely terrible and kitschy, and is orders of
magnitude worse than the original. Just to make myself clear, I
really don't like it.

Best regards, and I'll post one sometime that you can lay into,

Brian

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Brian Mottershead said:

(See Russell, I told you I would upload something for you to rip into)

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Brian Mottershead said:

Gosh, Russell, looks like I touched a nerve. Did I go too far?
Which was it: "absolutely terrible", "kitschy", or "orders of
magnitude worse,etc"?

Richard, I think your photograph is very nice. However, I would
work some more on the color balance. With the tungsten lighting,
the warmth is a little over the top. You can really see it in
your wife's white blouse, and if you adjusted the color balance a
little, your daughter's "peaches and cream" complexion would really
shine. As it is, she looks very yellow. I wouldn't take it all
the way to making the blouse white, since some warmth is nice. I
played around in Photoshop a little, and used the White Point
dropper tool in Levels to make the blouse white, then I used
Edit/Fade Levels with a setting of 50% to bring back some of the
warmth. This looks very nice to my eye.

Also, I think the sharpening hasn't helped your wife's complexion.
You might selectively sharpen her hair, blouse, eyes, and lips, and
your daughter's face but hold back on the sharpening of your wife's
face. Actually, except for your wifes face, you could push the
sharpening a little further. An easy way to do this selective
sharpening is to do your USM, then do Edit/Fade USM, then use the
History Brush to brush back in the sharpening where you want it.

Here is a version that you might find interesting. (See Russell, I
told you I would upload something for you to rip into)



Cheers,

Brian

Click to expand...

Brian Mottershead said:

Richard, I think your photograph is very nice. However, I would
work some more on the color balance. With the tungsten lighting,
the warmth is a little over the top. You can really see it in
your wife's white blouse, and if you adjusted the color balance a
little, your daughter's "peaches and cream" complexion would really
shine. As it is, she looks very yellow. I wouldn't take it all
the way to making the blouse white, since some warmth is nice. I
played around in Photoshop a little, and used the White Point
dropper tool in Levels to make the blouse white, then I used
Edit/Fade Levels with a setting of 50% to bring back some of the
warmth. This looks very nice to my eye.

Also, I think the sharpening hasn't helped your wife's complexion.
You might selectively sharpen her hair, blouse, eyes, and lips, and
your daughter's face but hold back on the sharpening of your wife's
face. Actually, except for your wifes face, you could push the
sharpening a little further. An easy way to do this selective
sharpening is to do your USM, then do Edit/Fade USM, then use the
History Brush to brush back in the sharpening where you want it.

Here is a version that you might find interesting. (See Russell, I
told you I would upload something for you to rip into)

http://people.ne.mediaone.net/mottershead/MotherAndDaughter.jpg

Cheers,

Brian

Click to expand...

Richard Liechty said:

Thanks for the comments. They were very honest, constructive, and
helpful. I'm still a little of a newbie when it comes to Photoshop
and all of the tweaking that is available. I tried to apply some
of your techniques and it was better. I also used to history brush
on the background to keep that a little softer.

Richard

Brian Mottershead said:

Richard, I think your photograph is very nice. However, I would
work some more on the color balance. With the tungsten lighting,
the warmth is a little over the top. You can really see it in
your wife's white blouse, and if you adjusted the color balance a
little, your daughter's "peaches and cream" complexion would really
shine. As it is, she looks very yellow. I wouldn't take it all
the way to making the blouse white, since some warmth is nice. I
played around in Photoshop a little, and used the White Point
dropper tool in Levels to make the blouse white, then I used
Edit/Fade Levels with a setting of 50% to bring back some of the
warmth. This looks very nice to my eye.

Also, I think the sharpening hasn't helped your wife's complexion.
You might selectively sharpen her hair, blouse, eyes, and lips, and
your daughter's face but hold back on the sharpening of your wife's
face. Actually, except for your wifes face, you could push the
sharpening a little further. An easy way to do this selective
sharpening is to do your USM, then do Edit/Fade USM, then use the
History Brush to brush back in the sharpening where you want it.

Here is a version that you might find interesting. (See Russell, I
told you I would upload something for you to rip into)

http://people.ne.mediaone.net/mottershead/MotherAndDaughter.jpg

Cheers,

Brian

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myp said:

Wow! Please share the technique.
Thanks,
myp

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JoeyW said:

myp said:

Wow! Please share the technique.
Thanks,
myp

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The first thing I did was run a "despeckle" filter to try to clean
up some of the noise. While this typically just throws away detail,
I knew I was going to soften the image anyway so it didn't matter.

The second thing I did was adjust the color balance to be a little
less yellow and a little more red.

I then did a little retouching: I ran the blur tool over some areas
to de-emphasize some of the more noticeable pores. Airbrushed a
skintone to reduce the bags under her eyes and reduced the opacity
to blend. Used the desaturate sponge in the whites of both their
eyes to remove the red (instant eye drops!)

The last step was applying the soft focus filter, so I made a copy
of the layer, ran a gaussian blur @ 14px, then changed the opacity
to 50%. I like to see the eyes sharp, so I used the airbrush eraser
to erase out the eyes of the soft focus layer.

Anyway, they have such beautiful eyes, probably nobody will notice
the grain or softness anyway!

JoeyW

Click to expand...

Richard Liechty said:

Took this picture the other night and am quite pleased with the
results. This was an impromptu picture taken in our bathroom (of
all places) with the door as the backdrop. The only lighting was
four incandescent bulbs over the sink, no flash. Digital Darkroom:
levels, contrast, some sharpening, and slight crop for 5X7 frame.

Click to expand...