My girlfriend. C&C please!

angelkat007 wrote:
I wanted to thank everyone for all the nice comments on this picture, and all the cool edits!! (the pic is of me)
-Kathleen

You made it easy.

Very nice pic. You've got a beautiful model to help you develop your photographic skills.
For what its worth here is my contribution to the post processing activities.

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haha would you all stop my head is getting so big its going to explode!!! just kidding! It really is cool to see a bunch of different versions of me though! You all did a great job.

Then why not "approve" more photos to be posted so we can inflate your head some more?

I'm with you on that one RAitch.

Then get crackin' and start shootin'.

great photo, great pose, she got that "Mona Lisa" kinda look goin on....

I think the original is great the way it is.... but since we are allowed to play here is my attempt

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Of all the variations... I like Keiffer's crop/tilt, and Maureen's very first edit. Combine the two?

I have to say Maureen's first one it the best to me.

k i just realized that I got her eye color wrong....
and I was bored... so I re-edited the photo...
k enough playing back to work for me

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Here is my go!!

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HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

forkball wrote:
Actually, the reddish gold was intended. :P I was having fun with it and it was the result of a gausian blurred overlay layer and a white and black point balancing. But I see what you mean. I may have overdone it a tad. It was intended to give the image more impact.

Evening out the light on the face is pretty straight forward... I just lasso'd around the area I wanted to change... then feathered the selection by 50 pixels. Then I added a curves adjustment layer and bumped up the RGB curve until the face blended evenly. Then the jawline kind of vanished on me so I burned the shadow around the jaw and bridge of the nose to give her face more dimension.

Here is another version without the brassy touches.

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I have to say, this post process job is incredible! For me, this is the best on the thread. Could you spare some time to explain in more detail how you did this? Even if you just talk about how you did the eyes so well I would be very grateful!

Thank you for you kind words. I'm guessing that you're wondering how I got the eyes to pop so much right? Well I didn't touch the color. That's all her. What I did do is pull more attention to them by using my burn tool on shadows at about 12% and went around the eyeliner and mascara with a small soft brush. I also did one sweep across her eyelids giving her a natural looking eye shadow effect. Before doing all that though, I did a little edge USM to clean up the lines.

Now another thing I did that nobody has is even the lighting on the lower part of her face. I used a lasso to circle the area in question... then feathered it about 40 pixels. Then I did a curves adjustment layer to lighten the area up and match the upper part of the face. Then I used the burn tool on the shadows of her jaw line to bring her jaw back. Everything else was just minor tweaking.

nice work scraggles, she is beautiful.

This thread has been one on the most informative ones I've seen here.
For the first, of course there have been many technical secrets revealed. the second issue, far more interesting is how different personalities create different esthetics. One is a dreamer, another is a taxidermist, then there are classics, neorealists and some impressionists. I got my own work to perspective here which is invaluable for me. My approach needs "some adjustments".

Great fun, guys!