From snapshot to portrait, comments?

[Sharon Engstrom]

Or my meager attempt. I took a bunch of pics at an event at church and printed the pics, 4 x 6 on a bulletin board. One of the ladies asked if she could have some prints of her husband and herself. I decided, OK, lets see if I can make portraits out of these. Originals taken in RAW with the E-500.

Original:



Portrait:



(this printed up darker than it shows, here, as I processed this just for printing in Custom Mode on the EIZO.)

Original:



Portrait:



They both got facials. A difficult part of that is getting rid of glare from glasses. For some people, and husband's left eye, it meant inventing an eye. In his case, I just cloned part of the right eye to invent a left eye. I added a backdrop by using a two photo merge, with a graduated background. Did a sloppy sort of job adding a bit of shadow to give it a more 3-D effect.

Just in case I should ever do this again, I'd appreciate any critiques you can come up with. Remember, this is done in PSPX2, so giving me hints in PS won't be a whole lot of help. Oh, PSPX2 has a "thinner" option. I didn't need it on these folk, but if done judiciously, can nicely take a few pound off folk. Rather clever, that.
--
Sharon

http://www.pbase.com/slengst/galleries
E-3; C-5060
Lenses: 11-22, 14-54, 50-200, EC-20 and Canon 500D

 

[Pedagydusz]

I like to do heavy PS work, and so I can understand the amount of work, the care and dedication and skill it took to do this. The result with the eyes is fantastic!
--
Antonio

http://ferrer.smugmug.com/

 

[Marn]

They are nice shots... and i like them ...

Im just not sure about the background ..mayb something a lil darker .. or a marbley type background .. you know what i mean .. i just think it is a lil to bright for there hair and skin .... but i like the shots of both of them .. cute couple ..

Marion

--
http://www.sitekreator.com/crittervilla

---- E-1 Thanks to all OTF'ers --- C740 UZ----- C-2100----- TCon-17----- WCon-7-----



Alfred Eisenstaedt said “f/8 and be there.” 'And Shoot'

'Capture that 1/500th of a second in your life.'

 

[jimrockfordIII]

nice job, I love his shirt it is way cool, well done....paul
--
http://www.rockford-photography.co.uk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockford-photography/

 

[Lois Ann]

Looks like a lot of work to me, especially around the lady's hair!

I'm with Marn, I think the background is too light. Otherwise, you did a really great job!

--
Lois Ann
E-1, 14-54mm, 11-22mm, 50-200mm, EC14
Used to have: C-765UZ, SP500UZ, MCON 40, TCON 17
Photography: 'Freezing photons for the future.' or 'Capturing a story in light.'

 

[mn88]

The good and the bad as I see it - first off let me say that with portraits, I find that the less one messes around the better. First the good: I think I remember when you took these - you had just received your fl-50? You used it like a pro and I was really impressed with what you got. Perhaps that taints how I see your pp work here.

In the first portrait, the lighting is wonderful in the original. Looks like you bounced it. (now for the bad) In your pp version, I don't like the glare from her forehead and cheeks. Her skin does not look as nice as in the original. Her skin in the original has a softer look to it. Also, you've brightened her neck, bringing out that ridge that runs down people's necks - it looks too prominent now and my eye is distracted to it. I really don't care for this pp'd version. It's also very hard (as I think you've discovered) to substitute a coloured background for someone with curls in their hair. There must be a better way to do it, but it looks like you've used the same tricks I have for things like this. It's left some smudges and halos around her head and again, I think the original looks much better.

For the fellow, your exposure adjustment is better and I think you've improved his skin colour a bit. I also like how you've cloned out some skin spots. The eye work to get rid of the shadow from the glasses is good - but I can still see a line across his eye which doesn't look good. Spend some more time on it. Don't leave the eye like that.

My 2 cents feedback for what it's worth. I'd leave them as they were - they were very good just the way you shot them.
--



Marc

 

[Lucy]

You did a great job on keeping her curls in the cut out.......but......I have to agree with the others that the background is too light and doesn't add to the pictures.

They also look overbright in the pp versions.

I wonder how they'd look if you just softly blurred only the backgrounds so you would keep the lighting right and have a darker background. If you kept these portraits in layers it might be easy to work on them again. I'm not familiar with your editing program so can't offer any other suggestions.

Enjoy the learning!

--
Lucy
E- 510, 14-150 and 14-54 lens!
U ZI owner!
Olympus C30-20Z
http://www.pbase.com/lucy
FCAS Member #98, Oly Division
'Photography is the art of seeing what others do not.'

 

[AJohn]

...I think you did a great job on the shots and the PP. I like the first one a bit better than the second, probably because of what others have mentioned about the background. The second one seems lighter.

Here's a real easy suggestion. I don't know the steps to do this in PSP, but, you should be able to select the background, add some noise and then do a crosshatch, or other texturing of that noise. It just adds some depth and helps separate the subject from the background a little more. I'll email an example.

--
Andy
FCAS Member #120
http://lightscapeimaging.com

 

[mnstoryteller]

But what a lot of work! Aren't these people still alive? I'd have asked them to sit for a portrait, figuring that would be less work that what you did.

On the portrait of the lady, something has shifted in her skin from the original to the final, and I think I like the less pink original a bit better.

You're a good soul to have done all this for them.
--
Steve

 

[nightboss]

they are both much improved ...

regards
--
David
(CH Feldmar Nightboss IMP US was the name of one of my dogs)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightboss_files/

 

[René Schuster]

Or my meager attempt. I took a bunch of pics at an event at church
and printed the pics, 4 x 6 on a bulletin board. One of the ladies
asked if she could have some prints of her husband and herself. I
decided, OK, lets see if I can make portraits out of these.
Originals taken in RAW with the E-500.
They both got facials. A difficult part of that is getting rid of
glare from glasses. For some people, and husband's left eye, it meant
inventing an eye. In his case, I just cloned part of the right eye to
invent a left eye. I added a backdrop by using a two photo merge,
with a graduated background. Did a sloppy sort of job adding a bit
of shadow to give it a more 3-D effect.
Just in case I should ever do this again, I'd appreciate any
critiques you can come up with. Remember, this is done in PSPX2, so
giving me hints in PS won't be a whole lot of help. Oh, PSPX2 has a
"thinner" option. I didn't need it on these folk, but if done
judiciously, can nicely take a few pound off folk. Rather clever,
that.

thanks to Marc (mn88), he said exactly what I was going to say so no more need to wreck my brain about "how do I say this in English", lol!

I like how you got rid of the background and how you fixed her right arm, but the lighting of the persons in the original shots already looked pretty perfect to me, but not so in the pp versions.

To the faces -particularly hers- I think I would add some amount of something like a soft focus filter (?, German:Weichzeichner), to make the skin look a little younger, less wrinkles. Even if you have all the MP and detail in your camera, here less can be more, I think.

Reminds me of a maybe 60 years old lady a work; last summer we had a birthday party or whatever reason party at work, outside in our backyard.

I was shooting with my UZI and my colleague Katja with her Nikon D 70. A few days after we both had put our results on our intranet, that lady told me how much better she liked my UZI pics compared to Katja´s Nikon shots, as these showed every little wrinkle in her face and mine didn´t! Must admit in her case it was not only the missing pixels of my UZI; I had a hard time with Neat Image and I don´t know what to outsmart reality a bit, lol!

René