C&C on my amature editing skills, please leave feedback!

So since my moms been in the hospital, my parents finances have been directed toward medical expenses. My brother is entering his senior year and my dad asked if I would do his senior pics so they wouldn't have to pay for it.

I take photos for fun only, I started about a year ago mainly doing cars and automotive events which I consider myself to be decent at. People on the other hand come hard to me. I just got my new 50mm lens and was playing around in the kitchen with my brother, I wanted a few shots so I could practice using the lens and having something to edit. All I have is Canon DPP and Photoshop Elements 8. This is my first attempt ever at working with skin.

I read a bunch of stuff online, as some of you know...masking and skin work is NOT easy in Elements. Gross.

Tips and suggestions welcome, ive got a few months to practice.


First image is my normal edits colors, WB, levels, sharpening.

Second is masked skin, eyes, and blemish removal.

1

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IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …taylorhockman/5​483221912/

Edits look good to me, and I'm thinking you'll be fine once you get him outside in a better shooting environment.

Oh - I should mention, a tad orange on the WB in my eyes - again, I think you'll be better off with natural light as your friend.

They look great! I was wondering what exactly do you do to remove acne? I am doing senior pictures soon for a couple friends and I've never done portraits before.

Thanks for the compliments, the mixture of hardwood floors, wood cabinets, and lots of tugsten light left the original image very orange, believe it or not this is drastically better but I can still tell they are orange.

Thankfully, his senior shoot will be outside, this image was just more or less to practice on his skin and using 50mm at wider apertures.

Thanks again for the input!

As far as blemishes go, I just used spot healing on a dupe layer and then adjusted accordingly. I'm sure there are much better techniques but in this circumstance they worked nicely.

I have another image I'm going to do some skin work on, that I adjusted the white balance/saturation much more aggressively also, I'll update with that soon.

Good work. I like the shallow depth of field. Definitely an orange cast (from the cabinets). Might
also be worth the trouble to clone out the brightest distractions in the backround -- the highlights
on the chrome.

Wow thank you! The clone tool is a major frustration of mine in Elements. I find it difficult to use so I'm going to have to keep practicing. I have a lot of factors effecting me..I use to use Corel for my PC. I just moved to Mac so I'm trying to get used to that workflow plus us Elements. Perhaps I'll be able to clone that well eventually. That would be hidden well with a subtle bokeh layer.

I'm definitely going to start paying more attention to distractions like that, thank you so much for the example! Did you just further adjust white balance or did you desat the orange?

Taylor02GT wrote in post #11924840
Wow thank you! The clone tool is a major frustration of mine in Elements. I find it difficult to use so I'm going to have to keep practicing. I have a lot of factors effecting me..I use to use Corel for my PC. I just moved to Mac so I'm trying to get used to that workflow plus us Elements. Perhaps I'll be able to clone that well eventually. That would be hidden well with a subtle bokeh layer.

I'm definitely going to start paying more attention to distractions like that, thank you so much for the example! Did you just further adjust white balance or did you desat the orange?

I adjusted curves for the white balance, using the gray shirt as the main guide.

When cloning, try working on a blank layer. Makes it much easier to fix mistakes as you go along.

Just a couple of thoughts --

Scott Kelby's Photoshop Elements 8 Book for Digital Photographers has a chapter on retouching portraits. It's a good book to have anyway, so you might give that some consideration.

50mm seems to be a pretty short lens for portraits. I'm sure others can give you a lot better advice on that subject, but my recollection from the old 35mm film days is that maybe 80 to 100 mm was preferred because that would tend to flatten facial features a bit. (Too short a lens gives big noses and small ears.) Not sure what the advice is for a crop sensor camera.

Here's a blog post from Rick Sammon regarding a skin softening technique. It's written for Photoshop but works with Elements, too.

http://www.ricksammon.​info …basic-skin-softening.html

Do you know about the pseudo-layer mask trick that's done by grouping with a transparent layer to create a clipping mask? (Put a transparent layer below the layer you want to mask, group [Ctrl-G] the two layers, paint on the transparent layer to reveal portions of the grouped layer.)

Keep up the good work!

Rimmer wrote in post #11925148
Do you know about the pseudo-layer mask trick that's done by grouping with a transparent layer to create a clipping mask?

Better idea: get the free layer mask add-on for Elements. If you're not working with masks, you're just playing around the outskirts of editing.

Rimmer wrote in post #11925148
Just a couple of thoughts --

Scott Kelby's Photoshop Elements 8 Book for Digital Photographers has a chapter on retouching portraits. It's a good book to have anyway, so you might give that some consideration.

50mm seems to be a pretty short lens for portraits. I'm sure others can give you a lot better advice on that subject, but my recollection from the old 35mm film days is that maybe 80 to 100 mm was preferred because that would tend to flatten facial features a bit. (Too short a lens gives big noses and small ears.) Not sure what the advice is for a crop sensor camera.

Here's a blog post from Rick Sammon regarding a skin softening technique. It's written for Photoshop but works with Elements, too.

http://www.ricksammon.​info …basic-skin-softening.html

Do you know about the pseudo-layer mask trick that's done by grouping with a transparent layer to create a clipping mask? (Put a transparent layer below the layer you want to mask, group [Ctrl-G] the two layers, paint on the transparent layer to reveal portions of the grouped layer.)

Keep up the good work!

Thank you for all your input. I'll look up that Scott Kelby book when I get some free time.

The blog looks like something I'll check into as I update this thread. However I find that photoshop related blogs are very hard to mimmick in Elements considering how dumbed down things are.

I do know about mask clippings, which I found confusing. I used layer masks often in Corel and loved using them. Its a shame its not that simple in Elements. I tried a little bit of that with this image. Otherwise It was doing a very long drawn out process using a feathered selection tool, eraser, overlay layer, and opacity. Whew haha.

As for the lens, I had a Sigma 30mm and it was to short. However the 50mm on my 1.6x crop ends up to about 80mm which is great in my opinion for portraits. Keep in mind some of his senior pictures won't just be headshots. I'm doing this on a good budget as well, otherwise I'd have an 85L or 135L without a doubt.

Peano wrote in post #11925218
Better idea: get the free layer mask add-on for Elements. If you're not working with masks, you're just playing around the outskirts of editing.

I'm going to download this tonight, I might find this easier than my own tricks. Are there lots of free add ons for elements? I've literally only owned PSE8 for like a week.

Peano wrote in post #11925218
Better idea: get the free layer mask add-on for Elements. If you're not working with masks, you're just playing around the outskirts of editing.

Great tip! I didn't know about this. Elements has added layer masks as of version 9, by the way. Hard to justify the expense to upgrade from PSE8, though, especially if there is a free add-on that will enable that feature.

Okay, so here's my first update taking in consideration all of the criticism you guys threw at me.

I did a before after so you can see the harsh RAW file I was dealing with. The colors in the second one look pretty natural as far as the color of the walls and my brothers shirt.

I added the PSE8 Layer Mask PlugIn and it works GREAT.

DPP:
White Balance
Exposure
Sharpening
Saturation

PSE8
Mask Layer
Sharpen Eyes/Bring Out Color

Mask Layer
Smooth Skin
Lowered Opacity

Mask Layer
Remove Blemishes

Contrast Adjustments
Unsharp Mask

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Nice job on the edit there. Still a little work on the center lower lip and below - just dampen the reds maybe. I don't know what you can do about it but there is a horizontal line just at the hairline on his forehead.