portrait of a couple

[bfree32]

be harsh, newbie with portraits here. one flash from camera right, natural fill light from left. edits welcome (i can post a link to full res/raw if desired).

[Peano]

My immediate impression is that the skin tones are significantly off, and the teeth and whites of the eyes look too white.

[Rimmer]

Peano --

I find photographing people to be a big challenge and would like to learn from this one too. Can you say a bit more about your assessment of the skin tones, please? What is wrong and which direction should they be corrected, for example. I have a great difficulty judging skin tones but these don't look obviously wrong to me -- perhaps they look like you might expect people to look in the winter?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Peano]

Originally Posted by Rimmer

Peano --

I find photographing people to be a big challenge and would like to learn from this one too. Can you say a bit more about your assessment of the skin tones, please? What is wrong and which direction should they be corrected, for example. I have a great difficulty judging skin tones but these don't look obviously wrong to me -- perhaps they look like you might expect people to look in the winter?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

The main problem is that the image was posted in ProPhoto RGB. Try converting the image to sRGB and see what happens from there. (If you don't have a good grasp of the various color spaces, you're better off staying in sRGB.)

[CactusJuice]

On this web page, the skin tones looks to yellow/brown tint. However, I think that is just my browser, so you may not be seeing what I see. The colors in this photo are much warmer when I open it in Paint Shop Pro. So I wouldn't change anything there.

I like the pose. I would crop it tighter on top; it looks nicer and more intimate with less of that background above their heads. I also would prefer camera down lower at eye level.

[Rimmer]

Peano -- thanks -- I didn't want to hijack the OPs thread, but wanted to be part of the learning experience, so thank you for your input. This is most interesting. I downloaded the image and opened in Elements. I see what you mean about the color profile not being sRGB.

[Rimmer]

Wow, this is interesting and educational. In Firefox the image looks OK to me. In Internet Explorer (not color managed) it looks as CactusJuice describes. In MS Office Picture Manager (color managed, I think) it looks the same yellow/brown, but in Windows Live Photo Gallery it looks OK. Looks OK in DPP, too.

This appears to be a good lesson in the pitfalls of color spaces.

[Peano]

Originally Posted by Rimmer

Wow, this is interesting and educational. In Firefox the image looks OK to me. In Internet Explorer (not color managed) it looks as CactusJuice describes. In MS Office Picture Manager (color managed, I think) it looks the same yellow/brown, but in Windows Live Photo Gallery it looks OK. Looks OK in DPP, too.

This appears to be a good lesson in the pitfalls of color spaces.

When posting on the web, the safest assumption is that no one has color management, so use sRGB.

[DH22]

Thought I'd give it a go. Edited in lightroom. Split toning - increased hue to 54 and saturation to 8. Added sharpness,luminance, a little bit of black and brightness.
Hope I didn't butcher it. First time editing someone elses work

[DAMphyne]

My big beef with this photo is the background.
It's all skewed and makes them look downhill to their left.
I think I'd darken the BG just to de-emphasize it.

[bfree32]

Thanks for the input everyone. Definitely learned something about color spaces, and I'm not sure why prophoto was the default in photoshop. dh22, thanks for the edit, I'll play around with some settings like that.
Good point about the background. I wish I noticed that at the time, but it's a bit more difficult when you're in the shot and using a remote trigger

[Peano]

In Photoshop, go to Edit > Color Settings. I'd recommend these settings.

[Rimmer]

Regarding the background, why not just straighten the image and maybe crop a little bit off the top?

[Titus213]

Originally Posted by Peano

The main problem is that the image was posted in ProPhoto RGB. Try converting the image to sRGB and see what happens from there. (If you don't have a good grasp of the various color spaces, you're better off staying in sRGB.)

How did you know it was not sRGB? I don't see any exif on the image.

Additionally, my fully color managed browser seems to be showing the original image exactly the same as the sRGB you posted.

I hope the OP didn't reload.

[bfree32]

Originally Posted by Titus213

How did you know it was not sRGB? I don't see any exif on the image.

Additionally, my fully color managed browser seems to be showing the original image exactly the same as the sRGB you posted.

I hope the OP didn't reload.

Nope didn't reload. I think that's kind of the point though. You wouldn't notice unless you aren't in a color managed browser, and it's certainly not a good assumption that everyone has one.