Your comments welcomed

[Meerkat17]

This is my first attempt at this type of photograph. Done for a friend's husband who needed a head and shoulder shot for a information board at his place of work.

I shot it in my office using one photoflood light and a mirror - unfortunately I have a dark shadow to the left of the nose which annoys me - each time I've tried to soffen it, it just goes muddy. If anyone has any ideas on what I might try next please let me know. I'm using PS 7

http://www.btinternet.com/~David.Lewins/g5/images/gbw0001.jpg

[G3]

Well, I played around with using the healing brush on layers for about 5 minutes...I got this far with it...

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-4/166972/gbw0001.jpg[/url]

[Meerkat17]

Thanks G3
Great job.

Probably tiredness on my part - about to have another go!

[ryuwulf]

Very nice.
Good smile.

cheers!!

[Leighow]

The altered image is fine. The portrait is really quite nice -- better than acceptable. The blue background may be OK .. but I opt for something that is not quite as bright. Then again, I know zip about the topic.

[Meerkat17]

Thanks for the comments
I managed to do the correction and also I toned down the background colour too.

Cheers
David

[roanjohn]

I would prefer gray as the background.........

I think the blue takes away from the subject...........

Just my 2.5 cents..

Ro1

[figment]

can some of the shine on the cheek be removed? Good shot!

[Meerkat17]

Thanks guys for all the help and advice with this portrait - I think I took most of it and here is the finished result - comments still welcome!
http://www.btinternet.com/~David.Lewins/g5/images/george0001.jpg

Thanks again for all the advice - but I think I'll stick to landscapes and the odd swan from now on! :lol: Till the next time!

Cheers
David

[Jesper]

In my opinion, the colours are too much saturated - the blue background is way too strong, and also the face looks very red.

I've just finished a course about portrait and model photography. I've learned a lot in the course - how to set up studio strobes, measure light, and editing on the computer to make portraits look their best. I made almost all photos using my 10D and 28-135 IS USM lens.

You can see some of my results here: http://jesper.fotopic.net/show_collection.php?id=74601 Not all of the photos are really great, but you know, I was learning during the course... :wink:

This is the one I like best: http://jesper.fotopic.net/photo.php?id=2396625

The teacher showed me some interesting Photoshop techniques for making nice portraits. First of all, if you just make a photo, it's very sharp and you see all the details, wrinkles etc. of the skin very clearly. To make the portrait more flattering, you can do this in Photoshop:

- Create a copy of the background layer and make the copy the active editing layer
- Create a selection of the skin (in the above photo I carefully selected the face and arms)
- Delete everything outside the selection, so that in the copy layer you only have the skin part
- Apply Gaussian blur to the copy layer (radius something like 10 pixels)
- Blend the copy layer with the background by setting the opacity of the layer to something between 30% and 40%
- Desaturate the copy layer a bit to get nicer skin tone (skin shouldn't be too red or orange)

By blending the background and a blurred copy of the skin part, you make the skin look softer but you still keep detail.