Candid of my daughter - C&C welcome

frankk wrote in post #12414439
Great suggestions. Thanks. I see what you did to brighten things up but have to ask how you dealt with the redness in her eyes? Her eyes look really clean in your version.

BTW - I shoot raw typically let PS handle the conversion though I used DPP to convert the one I posted.

DPP will import the images using the cameras presets for color, saturation, sharpness ETC. It's the only program that will.

I used curves to brighten it. I used a layer set to screen to brighten her eyes.
You need to watch the red veins when working with eye's.
I used the clone stamp set at 20% opacity to clean up the whites of her eye's.
Then, I controlled everything with the opacity slider to make it less fake after each edit I also did a 33% desaturation layer, to eliminate (IMO) the overboosted look.

Okay. I started over from scratch and applied the advice I received in this thread. Here is my second attempt. I feel like I may still be over processing a bit.

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Her eye's look grey and it's still over saturated, IMO

Can you post a RAW file with a link

frankk wrote in post #12411201
Thanks for the offer. Here is the original. No processing, just resized.

Yes I thought your first post of the image was over saturated. It made her skin red/orange. Is your computer screen calibrated for brightness, contrast, and color? If not any "processing" you do to your photos are really being done without regard to the "correct" brightness of the original image. You're processing blind because your screen might be showing you more or less saturated colors than they really are or your screen could be higher contrast than standard which would make you process your photos to be dark/dull.

Here is my fix up with LR 2.

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Second image is better in the eyes but I think ti still needs some catch lights. Nice composition.

Here's a link to the raw

Is this better? Whiter eyes. Less red. Though, still no catch lights.

I did calibrate my monitor using xrite eye one but find everything looks good on the big monitor but dull on my laptop. I have been using the laptop to judge the photos. Sounds like that's a bad idea.

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Better, but it's still under exposed. Just look at the histogram and the shadows are darker than they should be. Reference the version I posed.

Thanks for your help and patience. I moved the histogram to the center, referencing your edit as a guide. I felt her face was getting too bright so i masked it and crank down the exposure a little. Also masked the backgroung and toned it down so it is not so blown out.

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Blur out the background more. It's a bit distracting. HappySnapper90 did a great job pping the picture.

robbensays wrote in post #12431746
HappySnapper90 did a great job pping the picture.

I agree. I am struggling to replicate it though...to keep the rich color in the hair, eyes and lips, yet brighten up the skin and background like HappySnapper90 and drdiesel1 did. The (admittedly crude) techniques I am using to get that contrast aren't producing the results.

Frank, here is my list of LR2 changes to your unedited JPG. Tone curve was linear.

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