Portrait Shots at a Carshow

Hi, I'm pretty new to this and definitely need a lot of help, with regards to camera settings and post processing. Here are the pics:

Before:

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Also, can anyone tell me how the second picture and its edit look in terms of brightness? I have a notebook and a desktop pc, and it seems that with the notebook, the original picture is really blown out while the edit looks better. On the other hand, my desktop pc shows the original pic to be fine already, and the edited pic much darker. My friend who has a high resolution monitor also shows my original pics to be brighter compared to my desktop pc. Is it because my desktop monitor has a low resolution/brightness setting?

These are wonderful portraits. You've done well to capture teriffic poses. In #1, I would have either croped a little tighter on her face or a little looser to get her hand(s). You've cut her hand off at the wrist which doesn't look too good (imo). You post processing on #1 is excellent (but you may have gone a tad overboard with the saturation- but that could just be my monitor.)

#2 is my favourite of the pair. Each shot has good points- the original has a much more natural skin tone than the edit (the edited version has an orange hue to her skin). You have done well to reduce the "blown out" sky in the edited version.

Overall, I think these are lovely shots of lovely ladies. Some suggestions (just my personal taste): Crop in a little tighter keeping the same DOF (f/4) -OR- my preference would be to zoom out, increase the depth of field (say f/8 or f/11) and get the cars in better focus. Your day was very bright so you could have gone with the smaller aperature and still maintained a high shutter speed. Then they would become more of an environmental portrait- with the ladies being the main focus but a more identifiable background to add to the story.

Can I ask why the 2nd photo is at such a high ISO? not that there's anything wrong with the noise levels i'm just wondering since it looks like there is enough light for at least ISO 200. I like the 2nd photo the best, original shot, the skin tone looks the best.

I think on the first one whit balance was set up for a flash so that is reason why is so blue...thats all.

And second one needed more work due to fact that model did put too much make up to cover the pretty rough skin.So I smooth out the skin a bit, adjust levels, and dodge the teeth to make them slightly lighter.She looks like Carmen Elektra.

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Use of a Gray Card to define a Custom White Balance seems to be too challenging, but it should not be. It's really very simple to do, and for a given lighting condition, it only has to be done once and unless the lighting changes noticeably.

Here is the link to my article on Use of the Gray Card for Exposure and White Balance:
http://www.zaffora.com​/W9DMK/GrayCardTutoria​l.htm

I just adjusted the curves and a little more sharpening. Nothing more. The background is pretty blown out, so there is not too much that can be done.

Hope it looks better.

Graham

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That's the ticket. Nice work Graham.

Thanks for the comments, edits, and suggestions!

I agree too. Never really saw it that way before. So what is the proper way of cropping without changing the dimensions of the picture? Like let's say I just crop the face and keep it at 800x600 dimension. Is there a proper way to do that? Because when I do it, most of the time, the dimensions of the image change as well.

Its weird, see, I actually like the unedited version in my desktop. Unfortunately, I only have PS on my laptop since my desktop is pretty underpowered. In my laptop, the edited image didn't look that orangey. Once I saw both edits in my desktop, I was horrified they actually looked that way.

Hehe, this is me being a noob to all of this. I just put it at 800 since I thought it was getting dark already, so I put it at 800. I really have to learn how to be comfortable with my camera more. Still new to having to change settings all the time.

@sasa007: Yeah, it looks like I left it at flash, not AWB. It says manual on the exif, not sure which one I chose now. You're edit looks great! Can you explain how to do dodging and smoothing? Is smoothing done by Gaussian blur?

@blue_max: I like your edit too. I've never really played with the curves thing. I'll try that next time. By sharpening, did you just use USM? I'm still not too sure how to use it, like what threshold does. It seems the radius setting is the one that affects it the most.

@Robert_Lay: Yes, I would definitely like to use CWB! But I looked on your tutorial. Do I have to purchase this Kodak Greycard? Or would any grey surface do?

Lastly, can I ask what's the proper way of post processing? I mean is there a better way, rather than by just changing the adjustments as is? Like the first picture, is there anyway to adjust the background without affecting the subject/foreground? The first pic still looks too bluish to me. And now that I look at it further, it looks like I just cut and pasted the subject onto the background. How do I correct that? Thanks for the help again guys!

blue_max wrote:
I just adjusted the curves and a little more sharpening. Nothing more. The background is pretty blown out, so there is not too much that can be done.

Hope it looks better.

Graham

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This one looks good........and I think the background works for this shot.....

Now if I could just scoot the picture up a little......