dancing in the streets

[-kk-]

honing my ps skills. 2 pics of street performers in front of the barcelona church.

i wasnt too pleased with the initial captures, so added some background blur and desaturated the background to make the dancers stand out. let me know what you think.

[TByrne]

I particularly like the composition and the subjects of number one. However selective color is hard to raise above a cliché. Could I suggest that you sneak some color back into the background so that your subjects still use saturation as a means of focusing the eye, but still allow the frame to carry enough information that we won't work to fill it in and consequently steal our minds away from your lead subjects?

[-kk-]

hi Ted, appreciate the suggestions. will give that a go. thanks!

[-kk-]

how about this?

[TByrne]

Yipes.... I reeeeeely like that a lot better. Thanks for doing that Kelvin, very flattering. Is there any more color that could be suggested on the floor? (see, now I'm greedy... sorry.) One tiny thing. There's the subtlest line along the hair of the dancer in black. It needs to be feathered a bit. Otherwise... I can hear the music now and am drawn to the dancers without the monochromatic distraction.

[-kk-]

yea, im still learning the basic PS tools (in this case lasso + wand). gets a bit tricky around hair usually. that black line is actually part of her outfit, but you'll notice near the red girl's head, i missed out on a black strap from the background in the initial selection, hence the slightly darker colouration compared to the rest of the background.

the floor is pretty monotonous, flat grey all round.

hey thanks a lot for the comments, the whole point of posting here is to get valuable feedback like this.

i think next thing to learn is some dodge/burn, should add some subtle texture where its really needed.