Needing help with PP

I had started getting some equipment and experimenting with lighting and post processing until I got pregnant with my third and then I sort of went into baby mode. My baby is now 4 months old and I am ready to start getting back into it all. Something I was not ever very good at was the post processing. When I turn an image to black and white it lacks pop. Same with my color images as you will see below. I like this shot, but it just doesn't have that wow factor. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

I have CS3 and I just downloaded Lightroom 3 trial.

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nice photos,
here is my take on it, I adjusted curves, sharpened the image a bit, played with colors and turned it b and w.

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here is the other one

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How did you make the eyes look nice and bright and shiny? Did you sharpen eyes more than the whole image?

I uploaded better versions of the pics

To be honest, I think you mainly just need to lighten them as they are pretty dark. She's a beauty, though! I duplicated the layer and then selected 'screen'. You can then adjust the slider from 100% down to the amount of brightness that you need. For these, I left them at 100%. Otherwise,I did a sharpen for web, and touch of skin smoothing and that was all.

Here is my go at the close up.

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wow i like wat u did redsky =)

wow I like both of these edits... colors and brightness are much better. Thanks so much for the tips. I have found that using photoshop is not like riding a bike - if you don't use it for a long time you totally forget what you are doing.

kharley - did you do anything special to her eyes?

Nice edits from both of you. Might I say that she is one gorgeous kid!! Love the red hair and blue eyes. Great shots.

I did. It's something I picked up from another member named Kristy. I love her work and the eyes in her pictures are always phenomenal. I can't find the posts where she explained it but after I fixed the levels I dodged the highlights in her eyes, burned the edges of her irises and a little on her lashes. Then I did a quick select of her eyes only and applied unsharp mask at about 30% I think. That was just a quick variation on what Kristy does, I think. And I hope Kristy doesn't mind me mimicking her work.

Thanks... I will have to give it a try!

khartley535 wrote in post #10552772
I did. It's something I picked up from another member named Kristy. I love her work and the eyes in her pictures are always phenomenal. I can't find the posts where she explained it but after I fixed the levels I dodged the highlights in her eyes, burned the edges of her irises and a little on her lashes. Then I did a quick select of her eyes only and applied unsharp mask at about 30% I think. That was just a quick variation on what Kristy does, I think. And I hope Kristy doesn't mind me mimicking her work.

I'm no expert in photoshop, but here's my try on the close-up one:

What I did are:

1. Added adjustment layer > curve (just played it until I met the adjustment I liked)
   
2. Added another adjustment layer > Brightness/Contrast (I put it above the curve layer mentioned on #1)
   
3. Image flatten
   
4. A little gaussian blur added. Image flatten.
   
5. Copied background, changed the blending mode to "Soft light" and turned the opacity to my liking (I think I used 35%).
   
6. Sharpened image a little bit.
   
7. Done.

Thanks for the info... so Ima - you didn't single out the eyes and do anything specific -- I am liking the b&w conversion

You've done a good job, just work on getting your exposure right. If you shot these in RAW, up the exposure by at least 1/2 a stop, probably more, since I had to add quite a bit of brightness to the image. Here is my attempt, using some of my usual retouching steps.

1) Defog
2) Reduce Noise - masked out the eyes, nose, lips, hair
3) Curves - Lighten preset - change blending mode to Luminosity
4) Curves - Medium Contrast preset - change blending mode to Luminosity - masked out the eyes and hair
5) Curves - Lighten preset - change blending mode to Luminosity - set opacity to 50%
6) Curves - no preset or adjustments - change blending mode to Soft Light - set opacity to 20%
7) Run Bring Out The Eyes action from Pioneer Woman - set opacity to 50% - applied only to the iris
8. Cloned out the tiny piece of catchlight going into the pupil
9) Dodge Tool - set to Highlights 8% - dodged around where the iris and pupil meet, with a little extra dodging opposite the catch light
10) Burn Tool - set to Shadows 10% - burned along outer iris and eyelashes
11) Sponge Tool - set to Saturate 25% - saturated the iris just a touch
12) Used the healing tool on the little scratch
13) Image was still a little too dark, did a Levels adjustment, setting midtones to 1.20 - changed blending mode to Luminosity - masked out everything but her face, as I always like the face to be the brightest thing
14) Image was a little off on color balance, so did a Levels adjustment and adjusted each of the color channels to correct the slight color cast

I think that was it. Just play around with the different adjustments, keeping in mind that the mask tool is your friend and apply each adjustment only to where you want/need them.

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