family portrait large printing

Hey all. Happy New Year!
I had a photo shoot with a family on the slopes yesterday. Here is the shot that they would like a 20x30 thin wrap print of. Most of the time I shoot sports like skiing and football, but they asked me to shoot their family portrait on the slopes.

This was shot with my 7D and 24-105L. The finished (as of now) image was processed in PS CS5 and the final sharpening was USM at 200%, 1.0 pixel, 0 threshold. Final file size is 11.8 megs.

Anything you all think I need to do before it goes to print? The client told me they have quite a few friends that want to have a session with me and I just want this to turn out perfectly. Thanks!

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The "day-glo" colors in the girls' vests are way out of gamut for printing. They will probably print as a solid blob of color with no detail. Plus, they are the brightest part of the image so they become the primary focus of the image. Much brighter than the faces, which should be the primary focus.

Assuming you have the original raw, I'd go back and try to "fix" those colors. Try to selectively lower the saturation and brightness.

I agree about the vest colors, and I think you may have over done the sharpening, the people look cut and paste to me. Their teeth look overly bright white as well.

agree with the last post.
too much sharpening applied.

Player9 wrote in post #13629559
agree with the last post.
too much sharpening applied.

For output? Remember the post states there is going to be a 20x30 print of this image. Thanks for the help guys. I'll try again to lower the glowing.

You need to mute the colors in those vests. Your eyes always get drawn to the brightest area of an image and those vests certainly are that. Other than that I like the image. As far as sharpening goes you are probably fine. I always apply higher levels of sharpening for images going out for printing. To say there is too much sharpening is something that cannot be substantiated online as we cannot see how the full image looks and one that has had this level of sharpening applied and then downsized for display here doesn't give us a true representation. If it looks good on your end for the place that you send to print then you are good to go.

Hey, nice looking family!

For future reference, I'd put some effort into balancing your lighting for this type of thing. I'd lower the power of your flash until the "look" of the subjects wasn't quite as bright. As it is, not just the vests but the family as a whole is a bit "bright", making it look, well, a bit too much. A lower-power flash could help them to blend together with the background more.

But, I'd agree to pull back the colors of the vests and then I'll bet the family will be happy!

Here is my newest edit. What do you guys think? Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it.

A bit better -- the problem is that the green and the red/pink areas are pretty well clipped, at least in what we see.

Did you by chance shoot this in Raw? If so, you could upload the Raw file to a site such as YouSendIt.com. You could put your email address as the Recipient. They email you a notification with a link to the file, which you could post here, and we could download the Raw file and mess with it.

I mention that because the Raw file would have more data to "play with", and part of that is having an undefined "color space" where the sRGB color space hasn't been "cooked in" to the image. That gives more latitude in trying to "tame" colors which are too bright/saturated for the sRGB space.

If you shot this in jpeg, well, that's different, let us know which way you can go!

It was jpeg. Never shoot much raw, but I should have in this case. I'm mostly an action shooter. Those shots come more natural to me than portraits. Those day glow colors really make it tough.

mattymx wrote in post #13630228
It was jpeg. Never shoot much raw, but I should have in this case. I'm mostly an action shooter. Those shots come more natural to me than portraits. Those day glow colors really make it tough.

Ah, OK, well, you do what you can with jpeg, it just would have been nice to see how much we could squeeze out of a Raw file! I tried messing with the shot in Lightroom but too much was, well, too much, and I'm not a Photoshop retouching expert...

You guys are being over critical, methinks. If the girls didn't want to look bright they wouldn't have picked those colors for their vests in the first place. I think the last verSion is terrific, good job. Don't fuss too much over it, they will absolutely love it.

Wallace River wrote in post #13630316
You guys are being over critical, methinks. If the girls didn't want to look bright they wouldn't have picked those colors for their vests in the first place. I think the last verSion is terrific, good job. Don't fuss too much over it, they will absolutely love it.

I'm not trying to be critical -- like I said I think the family will like it. But for the future shots like this, bringing down the power of the flash and shooting in Raw will help, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with having bright colors, of course, but you don't need to have them totally clipped, there are ways around that...

tonylong wrote in post #13630340
I'm not trying to be critical -- like I said I think the family will like it. But for the future shots like this, bringing down the power of the flash and shooting in Raw will help, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with having bright colors, of course, but you don't need to have them totally clipped, there are ways around that...

Gotcha. Agreed for future efforts. Just sayin ....

Thanks Ian. I appreciate the comment and I do hope they love the way it turns out. The comments I was looking for, I indeed found. I knew there was an issue with the day glow POP and some other little issues and with everyone that chimed in, gave me an extra set of eyes to help with the edit.

I'm thankful for all comments and that Tony chimed in. I love his work and his critique is welcomed. I would rather someone be slightly over critical in situations like this. It is a lot more constructive than the old "Nice shot" or "That is terrible" comments. I am still going to work on this and I welcome any and all feedback. I really appreciate everyones help.