Shot looks "hazy", why? Before and After PP

bill boehme wrote in post #2963657
but I believe that you could reduce the exposure somewhere between 1.33 to 2.0 stops.

No way.

Go here, register, and look up 'face mark histogram'

jmanser wrote in post #2965567
Yeah.. I thought it was the other way around???

Expose to the right.

I did this with Adobe Lightroom.
White balance picker on a seam of the woman's blouse gave Temp +5, Tint -8.
I boosted vibrance and saturation to +25.
Changed the point curve to Medium Contrast.
Set Sharpening at 26.
Hopefully the JPEG compression won't ruin it.

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Curtis N wrote in post #2965903
I did this with Adobe Lightroom.
White balance picker on a seam of the woman's blouse gave Temp +5, Tint -8.
I boosted vibrance and saturation to +25.
Changed the point curve to Medium Contrast.
Set Sharpening at 26.
Hopefully the JPEG compression won't ruin it.

Looks good! Thanks

I agree the white balance is bit off, but the hazy or soft look is not a bad thing when comes to portraits. I do a lots of kids portriait, and am supprised how many Moms prefer the soft or "romantic" looks once I gave them a choice of PP. Here's my PP to soften it up more, hope you don't mind.

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Converge wrote in post #2965530
Youre kidding, right?

No, I wasn't kidding. You might want to check out some of the tutorials on this subject by Bruce Fraser that can be found on the Adobe web site.

BTW, here is some PP that I did -- I tweaked the curves in DPP and then adjusted the gamma a bit in PS.

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I have to vote for Curtis' version. Lotto I like the softness, but on my monitor, the overall image is too bright....Bill, your version doesn't look right at all....might have happened with the conversion?

Certainly there is no single best way to process portraits. Sharpening as I did is great for eyes but makes skin imperfections worse. The soft look has been common for decades, and there are techniques and specialized lenses to create it.

In the old days, you had to decide what you wanted ahead of time, and choose the right film and the right lens.

With digital images (especially RAW), we can apply techniques and software we acquire today to images captured years ago.

RGolfJ wrote in post #2968416
I have to vote for Curtis' version. Lotto I like the softness, but on my monitor, the overall image is too bright....Bill, your version doesn't look right at all....might have happened with the conversion?

Personal preference is very important and reds are usually much more flattering to skin tones. However, in the PP that I did, I toned the red down a bit. Instead of sharpening the eyes which I think can create false wrinkles, I just put a couple reflection highlights in each eye which I think is sufficient in an image of this size. I also went back to "fix" the gray background that resulted from the PP by extracting the foreground and then dodging the background gray out of the upper part of the background. Unfortunately, all of this PP took its toll since the changes that I made involved cumulative saves.

Too dark. Nice tan, though.

Select them 1st, then sharpen.