Who?...Me?

[kleigh]

A couple of pics from a photo session this weekend. This child has the most amazing eyes..dont you think? ;)

[Vetteography]

What a great shot #1 is!

[mrclark321]

Very nice...beautiful eyes

Dan

[Dimitry]

yeah, both shots are amazing but #1 is truely spectacular! :)

[skade]

#1 is fantastic! Amazing eyes!

[John Trogdon]

I like the softness of #1, and the expression in #2. Very nice!

[Titus213]

Number one is terrific. Everything came together there, expression, pose, colors, light. Even the blurred hand works with the title. Lighting does not do justice in the second photo and I think the clothing color is too harsh for her complexion

[ayotnoms]

The caption and the first shot go hand-in-glove. LOL
Nice capture

[cfcRebel]

Amazing shots! Very well titled too! ;)

[djonto]

I love them both and like the soft effect, but I have a thing about the eyes needing to stay sharp. Is it just me?

[Fer]

Beautiful!

[flyfisher]

I like both shots. #1 is Awesome.

[crusher420]

Those are awesome!! I love the emotion in the first shot. You can read so much into it. Sure has a life of its own.

[LadyHawk]

The first one looks like it could win a few contests... if you aren't a professional, you should be. Nice work!

[JSolie]

#1 is priceless!

[toddb]

Good catch! :-D Little bit more DOF but I know that's easy to say becaus it's not like you can slow the shutter speed down too much with these little ones.

It's a little flat, but with a few waves of the photoshop wand you could add some density to the image. It's a keeper.

http://pws.cablespeed.com/~toddb/forumpost/Gracie2.jpg

[calibano]

she is so .... meravigliosa!

[kleigh]

Good catch! :-D Little bit more DOF but I know that's easy to say becaus it's not like you can slow the shutter speed down too much with these little ones.

It's a little flat, but with a few waves of the photoshop wand you could add some density to the image. It's a keeper.



cool! can I ask what you did there?

[roanjohn]

Wonderful shot!!! The title says it all!!! It really made me laugh...........didn't expect it :-)

Ro1

[toddb]

I used photoshop.


First thing I did was I looked at the channels separately to see where the detail was in the image. I noticed that the blue channel had allot of noise in it (keep that in mind) but the detail seems to be in the green channel. So tab back over to the layers tab and on the bottom, select the adjustment layer icon (half black/half white) and add a "channel mixer" adjustment layer.

I selected Red:40, Green:50, Blue:10. Oh, and select the monochrome checkbox. Notice that I didn't give much blue, I was trying to leave out all that noise. Now you'll see a nice B&W image. Usually these three sliders should add up to 100, but I found that you can push it a little more on some images.


Alright, now duplicate the base layer (the original image) "Ctrl-J". Move this layer to the top. Your B&W is now gone, but don't worry, change the blending mode (top left on the layers tab) to "Soft Light". You can actually use Overlay or Hardlight as an alternative for this sort of thing. I've done stuff with screen which really makes it highlight glow. We've lost allot of color here. So in the next step we'll fix it.


Change the opacity of the channel mixer layer to about 44% (can't remember what I used the first time I did this photo). Also change the top Soft Light layer's opacity down a bit, to about 80% or so.


Next I burned/dodged the photo a bit. Not with the dodge and burn tools. I like to add a layer this way: On the bottom of the layers tab, Alt-Click on the new layer icon. I dialog appears, change the "Mode" to "Overlay" and check the "Fill with Overlay -neutral color" checkbox. This gives you a new layer that is 50% grey, notice it didn't change anything because overlay is a blending mode that changes the contents to be darker if it's black and lighter when it's white...but grey is in the middle so nothing changes. So pick a soft brush and turn the opacity down to something like 14%. I used this technique to darken her right side (our left) of her face...just a little bit (that's why we use a low opacity brush). I used white just a little on the other side to lighten the effect of the softlight layer a bit.


Ok, now it's time to sharpen the eyes. You can either flatten the image (which you won't be able to make anymore adjustments, or add a blank layer on top. I added a new blank layer. Here is the trick. As the new layer is selected, Alt-click (and hold the alt down) and click-hold on that little arrow pointing to the right on the top right if where the layers and channel tabs are. From the drop down, select "Merge Visible". This will create a layer with all your other layers flatten in this one layer. I then selected from the filter menu the "unsharp mask". My settings where (Amount: 127%, Radius: 0.8, Threshold:3). That helped quite a bit, for a larger image such as if you where to print the original, you'll have to use a bigger radius.


The front eye is still a little soft. So I repeated that last step again. This time though I'm going to add a layer mask (second icon on the left at the bottom, looks like a grey box with a white circle.) Now apply the unsharp mask again, don't worry about anything but the front eye. Once it's sharpened, select the layer mask (white square in the layer you just created) and make it black. If your background is still black, Ctrl-backspace, to fill this with black. White makes everything show through, black blocks. Now select a brush and paint that front eye on the layer mask white so that the sharpness shows through. You probably still have the opacity down, you can raise it to 100% for this. Use a soft edge brush though.


That's it.

[ayotnoms]

ToddB: good narrative but why did you say so much??
Like Miles Davis advised, "you got to hold a little back" otherwise you reveal the secrets of your artistry. LOL
You really have gotten into this post processing phase haven't you.

[toddb]

ToddB: good narrative but why did you say so much??
Like Miles Davis advised, "you got to hold a little back" otherwise you reveal the secrets of your artistry. LOL
You really have gotten into this post processing phase haven't you.


LOL, true. I really like the post part I guess. That's probably why I shoot raw only, for future renditions. I love taking the pictures, but I always have in the back of my mind how I'm going to post process it. I think it's because I haven't really been out much to take pictures. My work is pretty demanding, then I spend as much time as I can with the family before they go to sleep, then I stay up to tweak. I'm finding allot of hidden treasures in my current photo archive I didn't think where that good. I didn't realize it was that long until I pressed the preview, thinking no one would read that much, lol. It only takes a few minutes to make the correction after you've done it, but a long time to type it out word for word. :-P

[kleigh]

LOL, true. I really like the post part I guess. That's probably why I shoot raw only, for future renditions. I love taking the pictures, but I always have in the back of my mind how I'm going to post process it. I think it's because I haven't really been out much to take pictures. My work is pretty demanding, then I spend as much time as I can with the family before they go to sleep, then I stay up to tweak. I'm finding allot of hidden treasures in my current photo archive I didn't think where that good. I didn't realize it was that long until I pressed the preview, thinking no one would read that much, lol. It only takes a few minutes to make the correction after you've done it, but a long time to type it out word for word. :-P

Thats awesome. Thanks for the tip and taking the time to explain! I'll have to try that tonight on a few pictures. Tried NEATIMAGE (was talked about in a thread last week..) But cant get it to create the same sharpness that has been shown. But I'll be sure to try using the channel mixer in PS a little more. Keep the tips coming though, I think its great, especially since I'm a PS nut! ;)

[smittymike19]

That's it.

LMAO. is that ALL you did? doesnt seem like much :)