Studio shoot with baby

I attempted to take some standard infant shots in my home studio of my daughter and husband (hands/arms). I've only been using studio lights for about a month and I'm still getting used to them. I used two softboxes in this set up.

I'm looking for feedback on the overall photo (comp and lighting), but, especially, the PS work. I have not gotten any feedback on my bw conversions yet so I would like to know how they look to others. Also, in the first two shots my husband was wearing a dark blue shirt that did not blend in with the background. I used PS to make his arms and body black. I was wondering if anyone could tell.

Thanks for looking.

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Here's two more. Sorry for so many.

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The pictures are all adorable.

I think your PS efforts accomplished what you were trying to do.
You are to be complimented on the exposures. I see evidence to the effect that you might have initially underexposed and then corrected for that in PS.
Nonetheless, the tonal range that you ended up with is very good. The lighting is appropriate for infants - nicely diffuse - not harsh - very nice.

I would make one suggestion - trim the catch-lights - one per eye is natural, but I would doctor them up to be more of a glint than a big bright ball light. The only other way I could describe that is to try to make the glint look like an apostrophe, radially and right at the outer radius of the pupil (pupil, not the iris).

Congratulations!

Thank you Bob! I appreciate and highly regard your comments. I have been trying to control my catchlights and keep them to one per eye, but as I arrange my lights to keep them diffuse and properly fill I always get back to two. I may try to fix them up in photoshop...new challenges and learning opportunities.

I barely tweaked the exposure in the RAW format on some of the photos. I'm not sure what I did that you're seeing. My eye is still very untrained; hopefully it is not glaring. I only have PSE4 so I have to convert to bw by using hue/saturation layers. I then adjust the brightness/contrast to get it where I want it. It's probably more likely I did something in there that caused what you are seeing.

I'm not an expert at studio photography, so I won't critique your work. However, I do want to compliment you on these shots. I have enjoyed them very much. Great work. (This little guy looks familiar- didn't you do a shot with his parents not long ago - bald dad).

Alan, Thank you so much for the positive comments. I'm still new and very unsure of my work. I wonder if that will ever go away Your encouragement helps!

Good memory, too. That was a shot of myself, my daughter, and my husband...done with the timer.

btw...nice new avatar.

Doing it in Photoshop is the only way that I know of to correct it. Here's my fix, which was only about 30 seconds to do in PSCS2 using the clone stamp - and that's the only edit that I made. Ultimately, you are the one to be satisfied - if you prefer the larger, multiple catchlights, then stick with that - OK?

I wouldn't worry about it - probably just my imagination. However, the Brightness/Contrast control is at the bottom of the my list for favorite tools. I much prefer to do everything needed in Levels, and if necessary Curves or Shadows/Highlights. Most authors of Photoshop books seem to think that the Contrast/Brightness tool (in any image program) is the least recommended tool. Most important though for RAW shooters is to keep the image in 16 bit mode in a non-lossy format (avoid jpg) such as PSD or TIF until the final save for the end purpose - then and only then go to 8 bits and jpg format.

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Thank you again Bob! I have been processing only at 8 bits. I didn't even realize the option was there and was defaulted to 8. Sooo much to learn!!! I also didn't know about the brightness/contrast being a poor tool either. I don't think I have curves available to me in PSE4, but I will try to stick to using levels in the future.