Jr Bridesmaid

[ZZRider]

Here is a picture of my daughter at my sister's wedding. I'm brand new to photography. C&C please...

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k184/tnZZRider/Lexi/Adjusted800.jpg

[Bill Boehme]

I think that you caught a very nice expression and pose with good hand placement that made the picture have a nice natural looking pose. The picture is a bit dark, but I think that you did get reasonably good lighting on the face. The glare from the ends of the pew benches is the only area that it would have been nice to change, but that would have required a completely different lighting situation as far as I know, but I am no portrait expert by any stretch.

[ZZRider]

Thanks! I agree on the lighting. My daughter doesn't like to be still long enough to get good photos of her. I really like this pose. I would really like to print this photo. Anyone have any editing ideas? I'm no good when it comes to PS. Thanks again1

[Bill Boehme]

If you turn on "IMAGE EDITING OK" notice, I can post an edit to show you some suggested changes that I think helps the overall balance. Since the picture is a little crowded on the right side, I think that it would be improved by cropping tighter on your daughter. Also, some layers masking can be used to work on the background so that it is not quite so dark and to add a little extra light to her hair so that it shows up better against the dark background. In the editing that I did, I also applied the clone stamp tool to help mask the strong reflections from the ends of the pew benches.

You can access the image editing permission notice by selecting "User CP" at the top of the page. From there, select "Edit Profile" and then just below the middle of the page under "Additional Information", there is a box that says "Image edit and repost permission". If you select "YES", it gives others permission to post edits of your images. Of course, if you do not wish to allow others to edit your images, do not feel obligated to give permission.

[Flo]

How fooking cute is she! Dark.yes lighten it up!

[ZZRider]

I didn't realize I had to turn that on. Thanks! I'd love to hear some suggestions. If you don't mind I'd also like to know what adjustments you made.

[Flo]

Didn't need hardly anything.you took a great photo.http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/emmaloudawg/Ashton/Adjusted800.jpgJust adjusted the shadows slighty and added some contrast.slight.

[jb_browneyes]

welcome to the forum. what a cutie

[Bill Boehme]

This is the crop that I did yesterday. One of the problem areas in the original was that the picture was cut off just above the feet which is not a good place to cut off a standing portrait. Here, I aimed for making the bottom at the midpoint between the knee and hip joints. Not wanting to crowd the hand, I needed to fudge that just a bit. In order to be balanced, some of the upper part of the picture needed to be removed also and I decided to make that just above the top of the pew benches so that they would be identifiable. The left edge of the picture also needed to be brought in to give good positioning to your daughter in the frame.

252923

Most of the processing on this image was done in Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop CS3 was used to create smart object layers, each of which was further processed in ACR to increase or decrease exposure of background areas as needed. Back in Photoshop, layer masks were applied to "paint" i the various edited areas. The glare on the front edges of the pew benches needed special treatment as they could not be made to look decent with simple exposure type adjustments. I used the clone stamp with an opacity of about 25% to accomplish that. One other thing that I did which may not have been called for was to do some smoothing on the face and arms, but the jpg image with its compression and then the additional post processing was starting to show some artifacts that I didn't like.

[ZZRider]

Both of those look 10x better than my original. I've got to play around with PS more. I'd love to figure out how to do this on my own. Thanks to all!

[Bill Boehme]

Both of those look 10x better than my original. I've got to play around with PS more. I'd love to figure out how to do this on my own. Thanks to all!

A very good beginner's book is Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Photoshop CS3.

It is sort of a hand-holding type of book. Not much explanation, but after you go through the 21 lessons, you will have somewhat of an intuitive feel for using Photoshop. I would recommend that you pretend that you never saw his suggestions of putting sky reflections in water -- they are so cheesy that they say "Kraft".

[ZZRider]

Thanks for the book advice but with daycare and gas prices what they are right now I think CS3 is still a ways off for me.

[Bill Boehme]

I think that you can use most of the stuff in the book on Photoshop Elements.