4 month old son: Comments Pls

[Sailfish]

Hi all. Finally got my 420ex for my birthday. This is one of the first bounce flash photos I took. I'm very new to photography and would appreciate suggestions. I'm also only just learning a little about using PS to edit the image. Until I started reading here I didn't realise how many people edited their images! 2nd pic is unedited.

[Titus213]

Hi all. Finally got my 420ex for my birthday. This is one of the first bounce flash photos I took. I'm very new to photography and would appreciate suggestions. I'm also only just learning a little about using PS to edit the image. Until I started reading here I didn't realise how many people edited their images! 2nd pic is unedited.

Welcome to the madness! Most images are post processed a bit. I don't know what you were looking for in your post process but I took your color and did this...If you don't want it up here let me know and I'll take it down ASAP

[Sailfish]

Ok, thanks, I love it :)
Can you tell me what you did to get it so crisp? The face and eyes came up beautiful!

Mal

[sixshot]

Such a cute baby. The shot is great and with the post processing Dave did it is even better. I must master Photoshop....

[Titus213]

Ok, thanks, I love it :)
Can you tell me what you did to get it so crisp? The face and eyes came up beautiful!

Mal

Thanks he's a cute boy. I did a bunch of stuff in Photoshop to desaturate the color image. I used a hi-pass filter to sharpen and then the real workhorse was Neat Image - free noise reduction software. Sometimes Neat Image gets things almost too soft. I'm just learning Photoshop. Neat Image will be next.

[Sailfish]

Thanks he's a cute boy. I did a bunch of stuff in Photoshop to desaturate the color image. I used a hi-pass filter to sharpen and then the real workhorse was Neat Image - free noise reduction software. Sometimes Neat Image gets things almost too soft. I'm just learning Photoshop. Neat Image will be next.

We too think he is cute :)
I hate to be a pain, but can you possible give more detailes of what you did in photoshop? What is the hi-pass filter? How did you desaturate? I have downloaded Neat Image and tried to repeat the process with this photo. But it still doesn't look as good as the one you did.

Mal

[Titus213]

Your image composition is great. Exposure is not bad and sharpness is good.

Working with color image in Photoshop – all work on layers:

1. Apply levels to bring up light and contrast a bit
2. Use Hue/Saturation layer to desaturate to ‘taste’
3. Create duplicate layer and apply High Pass filter – setting 10.0 - Hard light
4. Change Opacity to taste – 15-20%
5. Change Fill to taste - ~20%
6. Flatten image
7. Selectively sharpen eyes
8. Save at max jpg
9. Open in Neat Image
10. Analyze image – I selected baby’s face
11. Use default settings and apply noise/sharpening in Neat Image
12. Save as jpg
13. Open in Photoshop to add frame and re-size for upload

Not everyone likes the smoothness of these images. I do but will experiment with Neat Image some when I get more proficient with Photoshop.

[Sailfish]

WOW, you have done some magic stuff with my photos.
This is my attempt a following your instructions. When you say to selectively sharpen the eyes, how do I select them, using the lasso? Also, can you explain what creating the duplicate layer and applying the high pass does? I need to play with Neat Image a little more. Its prety cool.

Thankyou sooo much :D

[Sailfish]

I'm still not quite getting the same results. My images don't seem to be comming up as sharp? Any idea why? The High pass filter, when in photoshop CS is that from selecting filter->other->high passs?

[Titus213]

This site has some great tutorials in the Post Processing section. I would recommend checking them out first. I have been using Photoshop 7 for about 3 months now and really like it. It's big and complicated but really gets the job done. I can't justify the upgrade to CS. Yet.

I sharpen the eyes with the Sharpening tool. Select a brush size adequate for the eyes only.

As to the High Pass filter Photoshop says this:

Retains edge details in the specified radius where sharp color transitions occur and suppresses the rest of the image. (A radius of 0.1 pixel keeps only edge pixels.) The filter removes low-frequency detail in an image and has an effect opposite to that of the Gaussian Blur filter.

I got the method originally from a friend and then found this:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/high-pass-sharpening.shtml

[fetching]

9. Open in Neat Image
10. Analyze image – I selected baby’s face
11. Use default settings and apply noise/sharpening in Neat Image



can you explain this a bit more? i am with you up until here and then i am totally lost once i get into neat image.

[Titus213]

Neat Image is free noiseware. I have the free copy and it doesn' t allow a plug-in with PS 7. So I save out of PS as jpg and open in Neat Image. Just work your way across the tabs at the top of Neat Image. In the Device noise profile you can select a sample area of the photo for analysis which is what I do by clicking and dragging on the image. (If I am using a picture from my 300D Neat Image has profiles built in for it). I have just started using the package and don't know much about it other than what it produces. I haven't had time to play with the settings yet. Some folks think the images above are too soft/smooth. I like them but think they are on the far edge of smooth. I do like a little more texture to be left. The learning curve stays vertical.

[Fer]

WOW!

Where can I geat Neat Image?

[Titus213]

http://www.neatimage.com/download.html