Finishing off photos

Hi All,

Complete novice, I have taken some shots recently and now I want to send to the subjects, it was a family gathering photo shoot for a friend.

I want to know thoughts on the following.

The photos were all taken using 15MP, and I do not think they would need pictures that huge. I think they may want to print it out and maybe view on computer/IPAD. What kind of size should I be considering and any other tips with resizing ? Will the quality drop

I understand there are some quick tips when finishing off, I have photoshop Cs5 and I must admit I do not have the skills to do complicated things, the easy things that just require little skills, I can do. Are there any quick tricks that I can use to touchup photos, one that I regualrlay use is sharpnening. Its quick one click functionality.

Lastly to have a fully smooth soft skin, what kind of tools can I use in Cs5 ?

Thanks in advance.

If you shot in RAW your images will need more processing. If you shot in JPG, they may need less or none at all. Unfortunately your question is extremely broad (as I'm sure you know).

Some things to consider: Using a curves adjustment layer to bring exposure up or down slightly. Or using curves to apply a slight S shaped curve to pop the highlights and darken the shadows. Play with contrast (tons of ways to do this, Google is your friend). Add saturation, or make them black and white? Add a vignette (almost all of my photos have some vignette added in post)? Fix/remove distracting items in the background?

I think you need to be really careful with skin smoothing and event photography. If it's "fully smooth [and] soft" I think it's going to really stick out and look fake/cheap. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Many people will dislike it.

I usually provide people with a 1024 on-the-longest-edge pixel image and tell them if they want one that would be suitable for printing to let me know. If I do provide print images I make the dimension part of the filename (i.e., IMG_2923_8x12.jpg).

Further making this difficult is that each image is different... Maybe turn on image editing in your profile and post an example? And better yet, find an image from another photographer you like, link to it, and maybe someone will take a crack at getting yours to look like it.