Taking everyone's advice on PS.......

[Minkmommy]

I thought I would share a pic I got on the 4th of July of a good friend of ours and my youngest. I used photoshop and am quite proud of the results. I edited out objects that bothered me and adjusted stuff. A bit rough, but I gained enough courage to go play!

Thanks again for everyone's input on this! I welcome any retouching, fidgeting, adjusting of my work..........as long as you please tell me how to do it! I used the photoshop elements that came with the camera.

[Sailfish]

Can you post the origional to compare?

[lisa1969]

I agree, would love to see the original!

[Titus213]

Looks to be a pretty good job. Nice composition. Congratulations. But the really important thing is that YOU like it. You can bet others will too. That makes it all the more fun.

[Minkmommy]

Here's the original.......

[Cleo199]

It brought an instant smile to my face. I have to wonder what was stories were being told. Must've been good.......

[Minkmommy]

LOL....it was the gentleman's hat being taken from him by the toddler :-). These two are best of friends.....I took a whole series of this event.

[Andy_T]

Beautiful shot and great post processing.

Too bad it is so pixelated ... maybe try again at the 'quality' or 'number of passes' settings in the save control box.

I know ... it's not easy to get below 100 KB, but I think the quality could be better. The photo certainly deserves it :D

Best regards,
Andy

[Johnny Thunder]

Gave it a quick go to blend the lighting on his face a little more and bring some of the red out of the childs face

I used the lasso and the magic wand tools (hold down shift and you can keep clicking) to highlight both of their faces (adjusted one at a time) used the shadows/highlights option under images>adjustments to brightness (used the magic wand to highlight all the darker areas on his cheek and neck) blended it using a layer mask and the airbrush set to black. I also used the heal brush to blend everything together, including areas I did not use the filter on.

For the child, it was just careful use of the lasso, shadows/highlights to sublty brighten and adjust the color a bit.

*if the colors are a little off, my monitor at work is junk, I can check it when I get home

Great job on the post processing

-Johnny

[Minkmommy]

Wow! That's quite a difference......thanks for the technical explanation too. The gentleman in the photo is the one who has been teaching me a little about Photoshop. This was my first attempt at using it. I figured using it on a picture of him would be proper somehow :-).

Thanks for all the compliments! It's nice to be complimented on one's work when one is a rank amateur!LOL!

[Cleo199]

I hope you don't but there was something about the picture that bothered me. It just didn't seem smooth enough. I took it, well, I borrowed it.... and used paint shop and cheated because I have a one step photo fix. I also increased the pixels. How do you like this version:

http://pic3.picturetrail.com/VOL14/726902/1239646/104319323.jpg

Okay, it looked really good in photo shop. But looks so much different here. Wonder why?
Everything was so smooth and a lot lighter.

[Minkmommy]

The 100 Kb limit got me. I need to figure out how to reduce while maintaining integrity of the shot! Another possibility is that working in PS and reducing with the Microsoft Photo Editor <ducking to avoid thrown objects> caused problems.......that's what happened to my pixelated contribution!

Thanks for your help though! I appreciate you taking the time to work on this for me!

[Andy_T]

Minkmommy,

why do you reduce it in MS photo editor ???

I normally do
- resize
- USM
- save as JPG ... and then play around with 'quality', normally something like 5 or 6 for a 500x800 pixels shot. I think that 'format options - multiple passes' instead of 'single pass' gives better quality, but I'm not a PS expert myself.

Take a look at this thread for an 85 kb photo attachment I made that way that I thinks looks quite ok:
Shy smile (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=72811)

Best regards,
Andy

[wareseeker]

How about this if you don't mind...

http://www.creativedesignology.com/public/Minkmommy_boy.jpg

[Minkmommy]

I will use PS to reduce from now on! I promise!

Wareseeker: Interesting......nice contrasting colors. Not sure I love it, but it isn't bad either. Thanks!