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How much do you hate this glamour shot? CC please.

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Ladale

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My step daughter brought this young man over for a portrait for his mother. Using a DS I shot it in RAW with a Fa. 77mm at f/3.5 , 1/500sec and ISO 400. While in PPL I placed the sliders at -1sensitivity, 0 contrasts, +1 saturation, and +1 sharpness with WB set at auto.



After converting to jpeg.I flip the photo over into PSP. I will say that I have been playing around with some unconventional methods. I tried them and got what I feel are fail to good results but I need to have a critical eye put to it as I may be over processing photos. I will tell the unconventional methods after a little CC to see how well the CC fit the unconventional methods.

 
My monitor at work sucks so I can't comment on fine details of exposure and such.

The one comment that I'd make is that the background is a little bit busy, I might have shot it with just green bushes directly behind him rather than the art on the table, windchimes, trellis etc.

Perhaps you could select everything in the background and do something to desaturate it, lower the contrast or defocus it.

--

There's a box? photos at http://flickr.com/ellarsee
 
I like the pose, which looks very masculine, and the picture. I think his eyes are very intense, although it looks like in real life they might be a little deeper blue and a little less striking. What I really notice i that it looks like he's wearing powder and blush. I think that if his face looked just slightly less smooth, it would really be a creative portrait. At any rate your efforts are way better and certainly more advanced than anything I could attempt.
 
I like the improved contrast, though it has brought up a redness in his face. Nothing wrong with pulling out certain colours if need be.

The cloning is well done for his skin,though I think the smoothing is a bit too obvious. It's a very tricky thing to get right. It's easy to go plastic, what you do want IMO is to keep some skin texture. And the tone obviously, which again can be tricky.

I'm not a fan of auto WB, but it's not so bad here. I would usually pick a white spot in the frame as a starting point and go from there.

There's an odd white dot in the middle of his left eye, flash? Doesn;t seem to be in the original though. Maybe patch that up. I think some mild fill flash would also have been beneficial too, just to really show off the subject. But as it is, it's not too bad.

Hope this has helped, it's just my opinion and should only be taken as such. Ultimately, make it how you like it.

Ben
--



http://www.luzartphotography.com
http://luzart.blogspot.com
 
Ladale: I feel the picture needs some work on exposure. His face is to dark. The background is to busy. Other than someone with good Photoshop skills, there is little I could do with the back ground though.

I have often failed to consider the background enough in my own photos.

I downloaded the picture and tried to clean up the exposure. I could get the face right but blew out the highlight in the hair. I am not the best at using a photo editor, thus my desire to get it right in camera. Others here are much better at that process.

Pretty boy though. Wonderful blue eyes. They come alive when you get his face exposure correct.

Good luck!
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26289929@N05/

Don
 
Don't hate it, but support some of the other comments.

The subject is not light enough against the background. You can either selectively dodge the subject or burn the background. Depending on what PP use you use, this can be relatively easy or not so.

The smoothing is too much. Fair enough remove blemishes, but leave his face with some personality. He's too young for Botox.

Then tell him to get a hair cut ... or am I showing my age?

Or if you get to shoot him again, use a flash with a shoot through umbrella off camera and a reflector
 
What I sometimes do after post-processing is overlay the post-processed image on top of the original and then adjust the layer opacity to about 50%. This is because making dozens of small changes to an image eventually makes me forget what the original was like. So it's normal for me to overdo it. To correct this I added to my workflow a final step of blending only half of the changes to the original image. I repeat the half blending again and again until it is just about right to my eyes.
 
I quite like it. That being said...

People have mentioned fill (flash or reflected)...I don't personally know that it would benefit all that much from more fill.
I like the contrast changes but it needs to be dialed down in the shirt.
The seat back makes him look like he has double shoulders.
The metal thing coming out his arm is off-putting.

People have mentioned the background - you can try selectively desaturation and/or flattening the contrast. (you did mention that this was a glamour shot right?)

People have mentioned the lack of skin texture... I agree. Also, the PP treatment you used would be more suited to a woman (flat and smooth)... Glamour for men usually tend towards increasing the three dimensionality to the face - more shadows and angles.

The change in skin texture, especially around the eyes has lost his expression and personality for me.

Like I said, I think you did a good job... but there is always room... :)
 
Comments on the PP shot. NB uncalibrated monitor at work.

Sharpness and focus are good.

The wide cropping looks strange to me. The fact that the subject is so dark compared to the bright background further distracts away from the subject to the (overly busy) background.

I couldn't shoot a portrait to save my life, but I wouldnt have kept this one, sorry.

regards,
Laurens
 
It's a nice shot, but the PP makes it look over-retouched, like a Playboy nude. A simple way of avoiding this would be to leave in a zit or two, which would give the lad a bit of character -- he's a bit too perfect.
 
I think the PP represents what this shot is supposed to be....a glamour shot. I actually like the crop, but I tend to favor landscape style portraits. He's striking what looks to be a natural pose and there's just enough stuff around him to help frame the shot. I like it!
 
Forget the post processing issues, the main issue is the background. It's much too distracting. Try a different angle next time to eliminate all the visual clutter behind him. after that you can go and remove any blemishes on his face and play with exposure.
 
That was my first thought as well. There is not enough light on his face. Ideally a nice defused light would be the best. If just using flash head get a defuser like stofen or if you are really serious than go with umbrella or softbox.

Then there is the background issue, there is just too many distracting object in there. They are blurred and out of focus but they are still large blurred and out of focus objects. You can use tree for example as a sort of framing object but don't have anything directly behind the subject as it distracting.

Finally, if you did provide enough light on his face the only PP you really need to do is skin blemish removal. Also as it was portrait of his mother, a nice smile would have been nice.

It's not a bad photo but it can do with a few improvements

--
http://flickr.com/photos/devmonkey/
 
I see what the others are saying, but I kind of also like the photo. I like the garden setting, the relaxed pose, and of course the handsome dude. I hope you don't mind, but since I also use PSP, and he's so handsome and I should be cleaning the house instead, I thought I'd take a shot at how I see the photo.

It's a low resolution copy and it was a quick job on an amateurishly calibrated monitor, so your own work on an original would be better. I can give you my workflow if you are interested.

Original...



Edited...



--
Elizabeth
efg40
 
The original doesn't look good, but the colors and tone scale of the edited picture look fine. Skin looks good. But the compositon is boring.
 
Two things I did that was unconventional. I was using digital noise removal to smooth the skin. PSP does have skin smoothing but digital noise removal lets you put + marks where you want. It may be my imagination but it seems to give more control. PSP has makeover tools. They are blemish removal, teeth whitening and tanning. I used the teeth whitening tool on the eye balls to gives the eyes an intense look or so I think. And as you can guess I also used all the makeover tools. Again just playing around seeing what works and what does not. It does seem that some of the CC fit the unconventional methods. I did sent my step daughter away with three different versions of the young man. All free as the only thing spent was my and there time. And yes I do want to get better. I hope for the time to come that I can bump against professional. At my age I don’t see it going anywhere other than having fun but then who knows.

Frank
 
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