Portrait of my Daughter

[JimK/Canada]

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[Daniel Lauring]

The background is about as distracting as you can get but the picture is just absolutely wonderful otherwise. Great smile on your daughter. Nice warm lighting. The soft pink of her sweater accents beautifully with her delicate features and blond hair.

You might want to play around with the tehnique on this page, though the fine hair will definitely be a lot of work to mask.

http://www.cadvision.com/puckettm/psp/fstop/index.htm

Another thing you might try on a picture like this is to slightly offset your daughter to the right side of the picture (with a less noisey background of course.) Notice how she her face is tilted slightly to the left. The offset will make the picture more interesting and you will be drawn from the empty space on the left into the warmth of the face on the right.

Keep up the nice work.
Danny

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[PowerPet]

Jim,

It's a very beautiful girl and you've managed the lighting well. I personally think the background is a bit distracting... maybe you can blur the background? Or take another shot with the blindes closed?

Petra

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[Jay]

Very good lighting..I prefere more blurry background.

-Jay

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[Furrukh Khan]

Jim very nice portrait. The background certainly does not distract, but adds to this image. My only comment is that the image looks too much processed, and has sharpening artifacts. Holding off on sharpening would improve this excellent image.

Cheers!

Furrukh

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[Furrukh Khan]

Petra, probably blurring would be a better alternative? What do you think? Closing the blinds would maybe rob this photograph of this atmosphere, and the nice colors from outside. It seems like snow outside, which makes this portrait cozy, in my opinion. Of course, there is no one single way to improve an image, but many equally valid but different paths.

Cheers!

Furrukh

Petra

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[JimK/Canada]

Thanks for the suggestions Daniel.

I followed the instructions to create a blurred background. I had
difficulty isolating the hair though - some of the fine hair is only
1 pixel wide! And without the whispy strands of hair, I thought
the result looked too clipped. I concluded that if one really wants
to overlay a portrait onto another background that you should start
with the subject against a solid background. I can appreciate the
effort that went into isolating the cat in the example photograph!

Thanks again,
Jim

You might want to play around with the tehnique on this page,
though the fine hair will definitely be a lot of work to mask.

http://www.cadvision.com/puckettm/psp/fstop/index.htm

Another thing you might try on a picture like this is to slightly
offset your daughter to the right side of the picture (with a less
noisey background of course.) Notice how she her face is tilted
slightly to the left. The offset will make the picture more
interesting and you will be drawn from the empty space on the left
into the warmth of the face on the right.

Keep up the nice work.
Danny

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[JimK/Canada]

Jay, Petra (and all!)

I will try the shot once more and see what I can do to blur
the background - I like the colors. I am going to try the same
shot in 35mm with a 85mm f1.8 lens - perhaps the background will
be blurred enough (and please wish me luck with getting the same lighting!).

Jim

-Jay

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[JimK/Canada]

Thanks for the constructive suggestions -
do you find that you need to apply an unsharp mask
after resizing an image? I resize using Photoshop LE with
bicubic resampling.

Cheers!

Furrukh

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[Daniel Lauring]

If you wanted to get the outside, which I didn't even notice because of the blinds, I'd suggest raising the blinds completely. That would allow a simpler background to go with the simple portrait.

Furrukh, I agree with you that the photo looks a bit processed...especially around the eyes.

Jim, In answer to your question to Furrukh, it is always better to sharpen at the greater resolution, then size down. In fact, Noel likes a technique where the image is sized up, sharpened, then sized back down. Also, try a smaller radius for the unsharp mask (if that is an option for you.) For screen output you usually don't want to use a radius larger than a pixel. For print you can go as several pixels but it depends on the output size. In general, prints can stand more sharpening than screen outputs.

Danny

Cheers!

Furrukh

Petra

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[Judy Arndt]

I'm in agreement with Furrukh that this background is just fine. This tells me a lot about your daughter. She's at home in her cozy pink sweater, snow has fallen and she'll probably be playing outdoors. The mid-tone background is just perfect for her coloring. The hazel color of her eyes is repeated softly in the branches outdoors. On the whole, the effect is very lovely -- certainly a hundred times better than the fake blur backgrounds you see in most school photos.

Judy

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[JimK/Canada]

Given the comments about overprocessing of the portrait, I
thought I would provide examples of unsharp masks at
0, 0.25 (3), 0.5, 0.75 (8), and 1 radius - each with threshold set
to 0 and amount to 100; all done in Photoshop LE.

At what point does "overprocessing" appear?

Original



0.3



0.5



0.8
(not available - sorry)

1.0



and the fuzzy background for good measure:

 

[Jay]

I like the second potrait..You have a beautiful daughter.

-Jay

Given the comments about overprocessing of the portrait, I
thought I would provide examples of unsharp masks at
0, 0.25 (3), 0.5, 0.75 (8), and 1 radius - each with threshold set
to 0 and amount to 100; all done in Photoshop LE.

At what point does "overprocessing" appear?

Original



0.3



0.5



0.8
(not available - sorry)

1.0



and the fuzzy background for good measure:

 

[Sharon Nicolia26460]

Just taped into this thread. IMHO the second USM is the best on my screen, but for printing I have always need to sharpen more. With the blurred background you have a beautiful portrait of a beautiful child.

Sharon N

Given the comments about overprocessing of the portrait, I
thought I would provide examples of unsharp masks at
0, 0.25 (3), 0.5, 0.75 (8), and 1 radius - each with threshold set
to 0 and amount to 100; all done in Photoshop LE.

At what point does "overprocessing" appear?

Original



0.3



0.5



0.8
(not available - sorry)

1.0



and the fuzzy background for good measure:

 

[Furrukh Khan]

Hi Jim, good job! All of these will look fine when you downsize to web size for posting. In the small image of your daughter, you seem to have sharpened again after downsizing, because the small one has sharpening artifacts. Besides the eyes, the most obvious place to look for artifacts is in the shiny strans of hair. That is where sharpening artifacts are more apparent.

Cheers!

Furrukh

Given the comments about overprocessing of the portrait, I
thought I would provide examples of unsharp masks at
0, 0.25 (3), 0.5, 0.75 (8), and 1 radius - each with threshold set
to 0 and amount to 100; all done in Photoshop LE.

At what point does "overprocessing" appear?

Original



0.3



0.5



0.8
(not available - sorry)

1.0



and the fuzzy background for good measure:

 

[Elizabeth23842]

Beautiful lighting Jim! I personally didn't pay much attention to the background at all because I was so focused on her lovely smile and bright eyes.
Liz

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[Daniel Lauring]

The last one is terrible. The skin has been broken up into a grain. What percent are you sharpening? None of these look as "haloy" as your original picture. My guess is the sharpen you used, after the size reduction, was a lot of your trouble on that shot.

Danny

Nice job with the background blur...it is reaa

Given the comments about overprocessing of the portrait, I
thought I would provide examples of unsharp masks at
0, 0.25 (3), 0.5, 0.75 (8), and 1 radius - each with threshold set
to 0 and amount to 100; all done in Photoshop LE.

At what point does "overprocessing" appear?

Original



0.3



0.5



0.8
(not available - sorry)

1.0



and the fuzzy background for good measure:

 

[Johan Sahlin]

Hi Jay and everyone!

Hehe, well a CP990 isn't exactly a very good tool for
portraying?? For portraits I would go for a "real" digital SLR
like the Canon D30/Fuji S1/Nikon D1. But they cost A LOT
more than a prosumer digicam at the moment. So if you
want to take professional portraits you will need a more
professional camera as well! I try not to make professional
pictures with my 3030, because its not very professional in
any other way than the high quality pictures it produces
Its more of a toy, really. Autofocus is very slow, motor
zoom sucks, no real viewfinder etc. It has pretty crappy
performance compared to my 35mm SLR Pentax Mz-5n.
My point is:
don't use a non-pro product for professional purposes!

• Johan

http://www.dextonphotos.com

Very good lighting..I prefere more blurry background.

-Jay

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.

 

[PowerPet]

Furrukh, This shows how much more observative you are to details (I need to learn this!)... of course closing the blinds would take away the beautiful background. I was thinking more of getting a clean background that wasn't taking away the focus of the cute girl.

So as Daniel says, raising the blinds would be a better alternative, or even take the shot outside. Maybe only blurr the background if it's not possible to re-take the shot.

Petra

Cheers!

Furrukh

Petra

Comments? Does the background add or detract from the image?

CP990 + TC-E2 but with its flash reflected sideways to trigger a
Minolta Flash unit, bounced off the ceiling.