BFing pic, but no nudity :)

[drevilsmom]

I have a Canon Powershot S1 IS, and ever since my son was born, I've tried to get a sweet shot of him nursing. It's very difficult to hold the camera, him, and also take pictures. This is probably my best result. It is unedited, other than to change the file size, but I have no ideas on what I can do with it, or even to just leave it as is. Please feel free to help give me some ideas!!!:wink:
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/drevilsmom/IMG_4570-2.jpg

[jgogums]

Certainly sweet as is. I'd focus on brightening the eyes just a bit, and getting some fill light on his face a little more. Also a vignette might further hide the ear crop a bit and draw attention towards his eye/face.

It's easy to get carried away with whitening the eyes so less is usually more in these situations.

Try different white balance settings/sliders or a B&W conversion. Really there is a lot to play with here as the starting image looks really nice.

Good luck!

[drevilsmom]

OK, so I'm probably really showing how much of a newbie I am :rolleyes:, but what is a vignette? What about actually cropping the ear totally off? I have done as much, I brightened the whites a little, and I also shifted the colors so it doesn't look as yellow. I also dropped the saturation by 25%. Does it look better?

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/drevilsmom/BFing-1.jpg

I've only just started learning how to edit photos, so it's been a fun learning curve. I also don't have Photoshop, but I like what my ArcSoft PhotoStudio can do.

[Flo]

Very sweet.almost can see in his eyes where you are;)

[jgogums]

My fault. I'm so use to everyone having Lightroom or Photoshop that I just kinda assumed. Sorry about that.
I don't have experience with ArcSoft but it seems there are a lot of inexpensive or free programs out there that are quite powerful in capable hands and even newbie hands!

I like how you have lightened the image and his eyes are brighter for sure, but it looks a little washed out. Please keep in mind my work monitor blows chunks but since you mentioned you desaturated the image I wouldn't be surprised if he could tolerate a little more red back in his face (pink him up a bit).
Since you have image editing on I'll have a go at it when I get off work (I'm on a rock in the pacific ocean) if that's ok and post up a result.
All in all I think it is great your a mom, great your taking photos and capturing memories, and great your willing to play around a bit with the photo on the computer.

I tend to have a relaxed approach to processing a image. If it looks good, cool. If I understand how and why I got it that way...even better. If it has "technical flaws" (rule of thirds, exposure, white balance, blown highlights, etc.) then I want to be aware of them...but not ruled by them.

In the end it's a beautiful picture of your son that will always mean a lot to you.

[jgogums]

First image:
I actually had a trial version of Arcsoft PhotoStudio loaded on my home computer so I ran the first image through its software and made small changes to:

Exposure: Contrast slider to 13
White Balance: cooled the Temp slider down a bit to 4435, and left Tint the same at +10
Details: Sharpen slider to 15 (probably could've gone without)
Curves: Selected the red channel (under RGB tab) and dragged the bottom third of the diag line down just a touch...to drop the red a little bit in the image.

No real method to the madness. Just minor adjustments that may or may not look better but at least gives you a different feel.

Second Image:
Adjustment I had to do in photoshop with a layer to brighten the eye. ArcSoft (at least my trial version) doesn't seem to have the ability to create different layers like photoshop. Maybe someone more experienced can figure out how to use ArcSoft to get the same affect. I couldn't, so I went to PS to demonstrate how a little eye brightening can look. Some may feel it is too much or not enough...I just spent 3mins. and when it looked brighter without being overdone I stopped (in hindsight I could've gone a little stronger with it...).

There's many techniques and I'm no expert. I choose to create a layer that essentially doubled the brightness of the entire photo then I masked it off (hid it behind the original "darker" image) and "painted" back in the hidden layer of brightness only on his eye. The eye looked way to bright so I lowered the opacity which kinda controls how strong you want to affect to appear. I dialed it down by 50%.
This way everything in the image stayed the same exposure or brightness as the original image and only the brighter, hidden layer underneth was allowed to show through on his eye. Cool beans.
My apologies if this sounds like greek to you since you don't have PS::confused:

Keep in mind these touch up are done on a tiny file. You may see different (better) results working on your large, original file. Monitor calibration also plays into what you see on the screen too.

[jgogums]

These last two are taking things a little further. I hadn’t played with blurring a background in a while so I thought this image made a good candidate to further isolate your boys face from the fabric in the background.
Done in a similar manner as the eye in PS. Applied a lens blur to the entire image, hid the affect with the original image and “painted” in the areas of the photo I wanted to be blurred and show separation (just the fabric in this case).

Last image was done in Lightroom. I took the eye brightened and blurred background image into that program and added a little more contrast to the curve, as well as bumped up the exposure a touch then added the vignette. The vignette, to answer your earlier question, is a lens simulation affect that darkens the edges and corners of a photo. It can be a love or hate it type of affect. I tend to like it in some pictures but not all.

So here you can see three distinct adjustments done to the original image to draw the viewers eye directly to you son…eye brightened, background blurred (less distracting), and darkish edge vignette applied.

Thanks for letting me play with these a bit and please know I think your original image is just fine but as you seem willing to learn I figure I’d toss a few suggestions out there.
Aloha,

[chauncey]

A little different take As you can see, there is no right or wrong, just different.
Nothing more than a perceived color imbalance and getting rid of this discoloration on the "arm".
.

[drevilsmom]

Wow!! Have I got a lot to learn. My program does allow layers, but it is a pain in the hind end to work with them. Is it supposed to be that difficult? It works nothing like the help pages I've seen for PS. I love what everyone has done, but it's going to still take me awhile to figure it out. My program came with my camera, BUT it has extremely vague instructions, so it has been learning on the fly for me. I guess I just need to learn how to take pics that don't need any editing!! :lol:

[chauncey]

There is no shot that would not benefit from some PP work, even if it's just removing lens dust.