I'm soo confused about PP!

[CyberPet]

I'm so confused as what to do about post processing.

Firstly, I probably made a dumb thing to not set the camera to Adobe RGB and shot in sRGB instead (a pro told me that was dumb), and then I'm having problems getting the images to "pop" (the reason he says is why I should shoot in Adobe RGB). Well, it's kind of too late now to go back and do it all over, so what do I do now?

I was taught that when you photograph black and white things in a picture, you should aim at having an exposure that doesn't blow the highlights and not totally mess up with the dark/shadow areas. All well that way and I know all agree with me at some point.

But then I was put down again... the guy I was shooting with thought all my pictures were too red (well some are, so I agree on that one) and then he wanted to use some "punch" and more or less wanted me to blow those highlights (i.e a brides dress) and make the shadows even darker (i.e. a tuxedo).

Now I'm all confused!

So... I'm going to post a link to a picture and let you guys have a go at it. Remember it's aimed at showing up the best picture for the wedding couple. All techniques are welcome.... but the request is that you also tell me EXACTLY what you did to get the result you will post later. Since space is an important thing, I will not post the original, but a resized version for you to play with. Then I can try to "mimic" what you guys did on the original and see if I did it right (or wrong).

If you want to tweak the picture, you can get a smaller version than the original (800 x 1200 pixels) to play with here (http://www.bazazz.com/pics/fix/outofcamera.jpg).

Here's the image out of the camera (resized for this showing)
http://www.bazazz.com/pics/fix/outofcamerasmall.jpg

This is my own best attempt:
http://www.bazazz.com/pics/fix/petrasfix.jpg

I'm confused... I kind of like my version, but my proffessional friend says I should up the contrast even more (and also blow the highlights). It does look good, but then the guys head looks like he has a white set of hair on it (and as you see he has none).

Please help me with some good methods. B/W, Sepia and full Color is up to you! :D

[robertwgross]

Maybe I am nitpicking here, but I think it would have been nice if the flowers had a little deeper saturation.

---Bob Gross---

[Curtis N]

Petra,
Maybe I just have bad eyes.
It's a really nice shot! I had to look at them side-by-side in separate windows to find any difference at all (on my crappy LCD monitor at work). The only difference I could find was more visible detail in the lower part of the groom's coat in the second photo, which I guess is technically better than the original but doesn't add anything aesthetically for me.

Was the groom really leaning back that far or was the camera tilted a bit?

It also reinforces the great mystery of how some geeky bald guys can get beautiful women to marry them. Lucky dude!

[pdrow]

Here is my version. Not sure it is better, just different. I used the shadow/highlight tool in CS. Then I selected his head only and adjusted the levels and took away the red tone from his skin. Next, I added some saturation to the roses.

I have the numbers for teh shadow/highlight dialog box if you want them.

I think the photo was very good to start with. Go with your gut feeling- not someone else's :)
pam

[CyberPet]

robertwgross; yeah good point (and I asked for nitpicking), I'm debating if I shouldn't saturate the background too... or sort of make the green stuff darker/fuller.

Curtis N; Yeah, I more or less tried to bring out more in his suit, and also lessen the red just a tad, didn't want to go too far since she'd then end up looking green. But I think one might have to work on an adjustment layer and perhaps just affect some areas to lessen his red face so the roses don't end up salmon pink. And yeah, they were leaning on that picture, which was a lucky shot (it's not completely sharp due to me sort of hurry to get that one). Oh, and didn't you know that bald men are filled with testosterone and very sexy?? ;)

pdrow; I like! It has more "umph" than my verison. :D THANK YOU! You brought out even more of his suit than me, and yet you managed to make the background more rich.

Keep the suggestions comming!

[pdrow]

Petra,
Here is one in black and white and one in sepia. I used the OptikVerv filters to change them.
pam

[CyberPet]

I made a bw version too. used the presets that came with CS2 for mixing channels and then I added a tad of sepia to it. What do you guys think?

http://www.bazazz.com/pics/fix/bwversion.jpg

[RAitch]

Here's my shot with the layers used.

[pdrow]

I like! You kept much more detail in the dress and the contrast in the flowers is very nice. Good going. I guess you're likeing CS2 already. Guess I'll have to talk dh into the upgrade.
pam

ps:looking at it again, can you you select his jacket and pants and do shadow/highlight before you turn it into bw? I think his jacket gets too dark and you completely lose the stripes in sections of the jacket. now I am getting very nitpicky, but how about darkening the white area just behind her face? Also, the hand that is behind him - is she wearing a corsage? There is something poking out abov her hand. I noticed it when I was playing with it earlier today, but now it seems to jump out at me. It should be easy to clone out.
you're doing great!
pam

[RAitch]

I switched my camera and Photoshop to Adobe RGB but found the image management to be a pain. I reset everything back to sRGB for simplicity sake. After all, even most photo processing places only accept sRGB and why would I add an extra step? Sure, because the gamut is bigger... but sRGB isn't dead!!
If I shoot in RAW, I might switch to Adobe RGB if the picture was really special... but I find sRGB to be easier (I'm lazy) to manage with thousands of pictures taken.

[RAitch]

ps:looking at it again, can you you select his jacket and pants and do shadow/highlight before you turn it into bw? I think his jacket gets too dark and you completely lose the stripes in sections of the jacket. now I am getting very nitpicky, but how about darkening the white area just behind her face? Also, the hand that is behind him - is she wearing a corsage? There is something poking out abov her hand. I noticed it when I was playing with it earlier today, but now it seems to jump out at me. It should be easy to clone out.
you're doing great!
pam

Another easy way to change the black and white levels is to use a Selective Colour layer, choose black from the dropdown menu and change the black content. Do the same with the white levels. Can you get faster than that? No worries with the shadow/highlight tool.

[CyberPet]

RAitch, you sure did go all the way with that image... look at those layers!!!! Thank you! :D

I like the idea of selective sharpening, since you do want to keep the background out of focus. Did you save all those adjustmentlayers, so I can look at the content? If so, maybe you could email me the file (zipped up works fine if it will make the size less)? Not sure how big files I can recieve, I think the max is 5 megs, but maybe you have an ftp or something if it's too big. I really want to look at all those ajustment layers. :D

Yes, I find the color management stink when you go from Adobe RGB to sRGB... now with CS2 I think there's something weird going on too, cuz I have shot in sRGB all the time, but I picked up an image, adjusted it just fine and then saved it for web and it looked really washed out. ODD! So I tried Save as and saved the sRGB color profile and that did turn out ok.

Talk about confusing!

[RAitch]

Yeah, that's the step I was trying to avoid... since I blog a lot of my pictures for my family in Australia.
Sure, you might be able to get a little more colour detail but it's not all that noticeable in my opinion. Or let me say, it's not worth the little bit of aggrivation to convert 1000s of photos first. I just change it for the shots that count (artistic) where I'm using RAW and know I'll be post processing anyway. But then I change the colour space of Photoshop from sRGB to Adobe RGB and go (always forgetting to change it back when I'm done unfortunately).

About the PS file... I didn't save it. In fact, I had to hit cancel to get you the image of the layers. That was an afterthought.

If you create all the layers, you just 'play' with the values going back and forth until it looks OK. That's what I do.
In the case of the red colour layer, I remember cranking some values to darn near +100. Then I copied the layer but the effect on green was too much for the bouquet so I masked it out (you'll see the difference in the masks). Use ALT-BSPACE to fill the layer with black and paint with white.

Don't forget a curve layer to brighten it up if it needs it.

CTRL-ALT-~ to select the highlights and CTRL-J (while background is selected) to copy them to a new layer. Change the blend mode to multiply, copy that layer and change to softlight to bring back some contrast. You'll have to play with the layer transparancy to lessen the effect. I think multiply was around 50% or something... I can't remember. Play play play.

I still thought the greens could use some punch, so why not add another layer? Played with the values again until they popped a bit.

Select the top layer, CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-N to create a new layer and CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E to copy the entire contents to a new layer. Apply some USM and a mask around the glasses, eyes, flowers and adjust the layer opacity if required (to reduce the effect a bit). With a new layer, you can over sharpen a bit then reduce it with opacity.

Just looking at it now, I noticed some scratches on her neck. I didn't go through a 'touch-up' routine, but you can create a new layer and use the healing brush (with 'use all layers' selected) and heal into a new layer. That way, again, you can reduce the effect if it's too strong.

I hope the colours are alright. I did this on my Toshiba notebook. Some people are dead set against PP on an LCD, but I haven't had any issues.

[CyberPet]

RAitch, well I don't understand that either... I'm using a PowerBook with an LCD-screen as well, the only thing i really cant set is the contrast on my machine, but if you play with the gamma settings, I get a lot better contrast anyway (and closer to what PC-users see too, so an added bonus).

I really appreciate all your input and help. But then again, we all know Canadians are nice, helpful and polite... that's why I married one! :D A tad off topic, where in Ontario are you? Hubby is from the Niagara region. His parents lives in Port Colborne, so I go there often to visit.

[VegasGeorge]

OK, I was intrigued enough to take a shot at this one. I'm just a beginner at post processing, so you old pros out there shouldn't laugh too hard.

[RAitch]

I really appreciate all your input and help. But then again, we all know Canadians are nice, helpful and polite... that's why I married one! :D A tad off topic, where in Ontario are you? Hubby is from the Niagara region. His parents lives in Port Colborne, so I go there often to visit.

Thanks! I like to help.
I'm at the south end of lake Huron, about 3 1/2 hours from Niagra. I have family in the Niagra area and used to visit often. It's really nice there (by Buffalo).

You don't understand what? How I'm using a notebook to do PP?

[CyberPet]

VegasGeorge, please tell me what steps you took. It looks good. Thank you!!

RAitch, I don't understand why people put down LCD monitors (sorry for the confusion, english is not my native tounge so I might be confusing you - which is not unusual :D ).

Cool, maybe I'll come and visit (or we meet half way or something). Plan to visit the in-laws in the end of october this year (even if they are coming here in july). Hubby's brother is turning 40 so we are going to surprise him, since his family and him are not coming to Sweden this summer.

[RAitch]

Yeah, as long as it's not a cheap or old one, they work fine. You just have to look at the correct vertical angle.

No confusion... just didn't want to assume what you meant.

How are you making out with your photoshopping? Learn anything yet?

[RAitch]

Here's a Sepia play session I had. I used an Auto FX Mystical Lighting filter for the lighting effects.

This time I didn't use USM, I used a High Pass filter layer to add sharpening.

[Lotto]

--Robbing my hands and want to give it a try:o

The standard dream version
http://home.pacbell.net/coolbit/outofcamerasmalla.jpg

The Midnight Sepia Version 2
http://home.pacbell.net/coolbit/outofcamerasmallb.jpg

[VegasGeorge]

Thanks CyberPet! First off, I'm really a beginner, so don't take anything I say as gospel. I didn't use layers (don't know how, actually). So, I just worked on the original these are the steps I took as best as I can remember:
1. Used Levels to adjust contrast to taste, revealing suit details;
2. Played with Brightness to reduce highlights (his head);
3. Lassoed the flowers and cranked up the Red Saturation to taste;
4. Increased the overall Saturation a little.
That's about all I did.
If I were to work on this some more, I'd whiten the bride's teeth a little (to compete with the white dress), and I'd use the Clone tool to get rid of the background highlights between the two faces, which I find distracting.

Oh, and if you wanted to get creative, you could add in just a hint of a flash or gleam where the brides wedding ring would be.

[RAitch]

I didn't use layers (don't know how, actually).

Layers can be intimidating but are actually easy to work with once you start. It's ideal since you don't 'destroy' anything in the original image.
START USING THEM IMMEDIATELY.

* Create a new adjustment layer clicking the circle icon split with black and white at the bottom of the layer pallette. Choose curves (way better for MOST things than levels)
* Alt-click on the grid to give you more grid points.
*Apply a slight S curve to increase contrast. From the bottom left corner, add a point right 3 up 2. From the top right corner, add a point left 3 down 2. Adjust from here. Another way is to add a new curves adjustment layer, don't add any points, click OK, then change the blend mode to soft light. Adjust the layer transparancy to lessen the effect or apply a mask and paint where you want to increase contrast. 50% gray will not change contrast.

*Add another curves layer and move the midpoint slightly off center to brighten or darken the image.

* You can lasso an area and CTRL-J to copy the selection to a new layer. From there, you can apply a curve or selective colour adjustment boosting the reds.
A better way to control this is to add an adjustment layer and adjust the whole picture to suit the area you want adjusted. Ignore everything else (the flowers will look good, but the skin will look way too red - this is ok).
Then add a mask to the layer (gray square with a circle in it). If you alt-click it, I think it adds the mask filled with black. Then just use a paint brush and varying transparancies to paint in where you want the effect. You can switch to black to 'undo' if you were sloppy.

* to increase the whites of her teeth, add a new hue/saturation layer, switch to the yellows (not Master) and lower the saturation a few points until the teeth look good (again, ignore the rest of the picture). You can increase the lightness too, just be carefull to make it look realistic.
When that's done, add a mask by alt-clicking to add the mask in black. This will hide the effect. If that doesn't work for you, you can click on the mask and press ALT-Backspace or use the Fill menu.
Then zoom in and grab a small soft brush. Paint over the teeth with white.

Another cool trick is to ALT-Shift click on the mask to see it displayed in 50% opacity red. This will help you see if you missed a spot. I think you can also ALt or Shift click on it, but that'll show you the mask in grayscale so you can't see the background image.

If you're going to use the healing/clone tools, create a new layer (page icon with dogear corner) and make sure the 'use all layers' option in the tool bar settings is checked. Then just make sure your active (selected) layer is the blank layer and do your normal edit. This will put the healed version on it's own layer.

ALT-click on the eyeball of any layer to hide all other layers. Do it again to show all. This is a great way to see the before and after of edits, or just to see what's on a layer.


The cool thing about layers is that you can turn them on and off to see if you like the effect. It's better than undo redo because you can change the layer way down in your workflow. Maybe you darkened the image but increased contrast later which made it too dark again. You'd then either have to re-apply a curve or level or you can just change the adjustment layer to suite the situation.

[CyberPet]

Lotto, I like that standard dream version... looks cool! Did you use a special filter or action macro for it? And that midnight sepia is cool.. where do one find a good script for that?

Raitch, great explaination on how to use layers (I'm addicted to layers and have no clue how I could surived before Adobe released a version with them - been using PS since version 2.5 and still learning).

Another tip for you guys: Use the Layer Comps if you have Photoshop CS (1 or 2). It's really useful if you want several versions in one file.

[Lotto]

Thx CP. On the 'standard dream' version, I use the Gaussian blurs 3 times. First lower the color satuation a bit on the original, then:

1. In quick mask mode, use the Elliptical Marquee tool to draw a frame around B/G, Gaussian blur the mask.

2. Switch to standard mode, inverse the selection, Gaussian blur the area outside the mask.

3. Deselect, make layer copy of original, then Gaussian blur the whole layer copy once more.

To finish it off, use Soft Light blending mode, or play with Opacity persentage, to blend the copy and the original together.

The midnight sepia action could be found here:
http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm#Glamor_Blur

[CyberPet]

Lotto, thank you so much!!! You're a hero now. I have soo many things to try now. FUN!!! :D

[Gary Petersen]

I had to play a bit too but someone said it right before. Go with what feels good to you.

Color boost. http://www.pbase.com/alibaby/image/47881391.jpghttp://www.pbase.com/alibaby/image/47881391

B&W conversion of it.http://www.pbase.com/alibaby/image/47881392.jpg http://www.pbase.com/alibaby/image/47881392

[PhotosGuy]

Petra, do you have a RAW file to play with?