Pic on an overcast day (56K warning)

[ProAc_Fan]

This shot was taken on a very overcast day. Any ideas on how to improve the overall "look" of this pic in the post processing? The photo is untouched except for resizing and compressing to fit under the 100K file limit.

[exposingmyself]

i LOVE overcast light.

what's there to improve? the bricks are straight, she's looking straight at you, you're eye level to her, the colors pop, she seems very comfortable with you, enough cropping to sustain balance of picture.
it's perfect. :D

[thomascanty]

I'd have to agree. I don't see anything here that needs to be improved.

[Vetteography]

It is a great picture and she is a little doll. I think it is a keeper, just as it is.

[Citizensmith]

Nice photo, the lighting is great. Just personal taste but the photo makes her look a little old for her age if you know what I mean.

[schmoelzel]

Nice skin tones but I would have like to see the focus on the eyes rather than the bricks.......the bricks look more in focus than the face.

[Titus213]

Nice photo, the lighting is great. Just personal taste but the photo makes her look a little old for her age if you know what I mean.

My thoughts exactly. But then again, maybe she looks very young for her age. It's a very well done picture of a very pretty little girl. The overcast works well for this type of picture I think.

[skade]

A nice shot! How old is she? She does look young to me.

[Croasdail]

first - brilliant subject matter - you couldn't ask for better. okay - went and played with the image a little. Here are my thoughts. The brick has a real orange tint to them that is competing with the girls complextion washing out her skin... you see the brick more then you see her. So two things seemed to work for me. First I went into color saturation and with the red channel only reduced both saturation and level. This turned the brick a more burgandy color that didn't compete with her. The other was to go with a monochrome version compressing the dynamic range giving it mor e contrast. Both turned out reasonably well. It is such a good image... play around and just de-emphasize the orangeness of the brick. I think you have a keeper for sure. I have attached a quick example - by no means a done image - but just to show you with some of the orange removed. Cheers!

[ProAc_Fan]

Thank you for all the kind words. The "model" is none other than my 8 yr old daughter. I guess she should feel comfortable, I've been loving her since she first came into this world. :) I agree with the statement about wishing the bricks were less prominent in the photo. Sabrina seems to be a natural when it comes to posing for pics. Not to toot her horn ( but I'm a proud Dad so here goes), Sabrina has competed and won at National level pageants. However she seems to prefer modelling over pageants.

Mike

[MAD DOG]

Nice shot.
The girl shows attitude.

[mgbeach]

great pose and expression. The saturation definitely needed to be toned down form the first picture. The edit that Croasdail did just seems a little washed out. I took his, duplicated to a new layer in PSCS, and changed the blend mode of the new layer to Overlay at about 77%. That technique really knocks the haze out. Again, great shot!

[Croasdail]

I like that you got the red highlights back into her hair - mine was done quick and dirty just for effect to show the reduction in red... it is such a nice picture I was searching for something help knock the reds down a bit. when I get the time I will have to try what you did on some other pics of mine..