Need some C&C please...

Hey guys and girls... I'm looking for some constructive C&C on this one... It was about 4 in the afternoon and the sun was pretty harsh... I had an umbrella over her trying to block out some of the sun... And I did some pretty heavy PP work as well... Please let me know what you guys think...

I think her face looks way too green. You probably PP'd the image trying to give a certain feel, but the greenish tint makes her almost look nauseas.

Can you show the original?

I like this. I even like the green tone to it. It makes is kind of jungle natural, even if the face becomes a bit nauseas as Rsyx says.

But even great shots can be better. My first impression, and the first thing I see just looking at it is this: (these are absolutely minor things, but just something that one could work with, should the shot go for a magazine front page):

1: The hair. There are loose hanging hairs all over. Especially those covering her face should be removed.

2: There is a white "worm" coming out of her right chin - should be removed.

3: Her arms in the water are a bit to visible. I would blur them out a bit more. Alternatively consider cropping just over the DTB text.

4: I would remove a little (not all) of the shadow / wrinkle under her left eye.

5: The reflection of her nose in the water is quite heavy – I would blur it a little - especially the black nostrils.

taknbyd wrote in post #10685542
Hey guys and girls... I'm looking for some constructive C&C on this one... It was about 4 in the afternoon and the sun was pretty harsh... I had an umbrella over her trying to block out some of the sun... And I did some pretty heavy PP work as well... Please let me know what you guys think...

Thanks again...

The heavy work in post has probably destroyed the primal quality that may well have been available in the original. (try to post original images to give the observer a chance to see where you were aiming... on the grounds that one picture is worth a thousand words. )

The green cast is not helping your image. People do not have green skin (we can accept them in images of the type created by Andy Warhol like his Monroe series, for example) and it always looks wrong, in my opinion. Post processing tends to look best with subtle adjustments... much of the evidence in this image suggests a good book about the subject of retouching images, would be a good purchase.

Permit me to recommend two books from the following website: http://www.photoshopdi​va.com/books.html

Photoshop Restoration and Retouching: 3rd edition and Photoshop Masking and Compositing. Both books are by Katrin Eismann and I can recommend them highly. I don't know Katrin other than through her work and she is (in my opinion) the retoucher's retoucher and her books are clear and well laid out.

Back to your image: It is difficult to tell much from the web and on downloading your image, I see that you used a 50mm f/1.4 lens wide open at 1/1250th and IOS 100. Unfortunately, you did not have the history feature of Photoshop CS5 turned on when using it in Windows so I cannot follow your processing. When opened in Photoshop, your image appeared to have a green cast, was possibly over-sharpened, displayed what appear to be brush marks from post processing, had a somewhat misplaced looking image for left to right and more space than was necessary at the top of the image, and that space included at least one competing highlight that served to take the observer's eye out of the image.

The visible shoulder appears to have the wrong skin colour, if it is skin and in the end I chose to remove the colour and just slightly tint the image. Cropped the image to leave the water beneath the subject to give her something to move into and removed the excess space at the top of the image while placing the subject in the centre of the frame. A slight misplacement looks like an accident whereas a deliberately wrong misplacement looks intentional.

Reluctantly, because I had no idea what you had intended in your image, I have made a couple of rapid adjustments. 1. Auto colour to demonstrate the extent of the green cast which is present in your image (try this yourself and see the difference) 2. selective crop to give the observer nowhere else to look and to remove the upper competing highlight and the brush marks that are an unnecessary distraction. Spotting out the white marks on the hair that are possibly some form of jpeg compression artifact.

All of the issues which I have mentioned are ringed in red. My crop will have the image size smaller because I wanted to keep the same size relationship between the images. Hope this helps.

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Wow pixelmangler, that's some very thorough and constructive feedback for the OP. Interesting read.

First off let me say thanks so much for the AWESOME feedback... I have learned so much about photography on these forums because of people like Rsyx, TRune, and Pixelmangler... It's nice to see what a great community we have on here. And I really appreciate the comments...

Pixelmangler, I can't express the thanks for taking the time to critique my photo the way that you have done... What an awesome lesson in photography and postprocessing... As to the smug marks in the photo that look like were made from brush strokes... Those were foliage hanging from the tree that we were under... The cropping that you made makes total sense and I can't believe that I didn't even notice ( I still have tons to learn). And I didn't even think about the green tint making the subject look nauseas, as Rsyx first mentioned... And what a difference you have made in the photo, Pixel.. You are truly an artist and thanks so much again for taking the time to critique in such detail. Once I get back home I will have to see what I can do with the image and I will post my work after I am done...

I shoot in Raw format but due to having to post it on the forums I run everything throught photobucket cause I don't know any other way to post on here.... But here is the original image if you guys want to have a crack at it... Once again, thanks so much... I really can't express that enough...

taknbyd wrote in post #10686827
First off let me say thanks so much for the AWESOME feedback... I have learned so much about photography on these forums because of people like Rsyx, TRune, and Pixelmangler... It's nice to see what a great community we have on here. And I really appreciate the comments...

Pixelmangler, I can't express the thanks for taking the time to critique my photo the way that you have done... What an awesome lesson in photography and postprocessing... As to the smug marks in the photo that look like were made from brush strokes... Those were foliage hanging from the tree that we were under... The cropping that you made makes total sense and I can't believe that I didn't even notice ( I still have tons to learn). And I didn't even think about the green tint making the subject look nauseas, as Rsyx first mentioned... And what a difference you have made in the photo, Pixel.. You are truly an artist and thanks so much again for taking the time to critique in such detail. Once I get back home I will have to see what I can do with the image and I will post my work after I am done...

I shoot in Raw format but due to having to post it on the forums I run everything throught photobucket cause I don't know any other way to post on here.... But here is the original image if you guys want to have a crack at it... Once again, thanks so much... I really can't express that enough...

Thanks for your thanks. You are very welcome, taknbyd.

Point taken about the 'brush marks' but I would be ruthless and remove them (crop) because they were rather indistinct and they did not add anything useful to the image, in my opinion. Your image had some similar fine markings over the subjects face (where I had ringed in red) and I was keen to remove them.

Thanks for posting the original image... it is only 8bit and 682 x 1023 pixels in size and I am guessing that it would have fallen apart with any heavy processing and that makes it difficult to demonstrate what could have be done with this image.

I mentioned the history feature of Photoshop and I had really meant to say history log. when you are starting out with digital processing, it can be easy to forget what you did and Photoshop has a perfect memory tucked away called the history log. You enable it from the general preferences screen. Check the history log checkbox and then enable the detailed setting from the drop down menu marked edit log items:

What follows is a history log entry (found in the XMP sidecar file with file info command) so that you can tell exactly what I did to one particular screenshot image.

2010-08-09T15:15:30+01:00 File Screen shot 2010-08-09 at 15.15.08.png opened
Open Macintosh HD:Users:jeffesktop:Screen shot 2010-08-09 at 15.15.08.png

Elliptical Marquee
Set Selection To: ellipse
Top: 272 pixels
Left: 188 pixels
Bottom: 308 pixels
Right: 308 pixels
With Anti-alias

Stroke
Stroke Width: 2
Location: center
Opacity: 100%
Mode: normal
Color: HSB color
Hue: 360°
Saturation: 100
Brightness: 100

Deselect
Set Selection To: none

Elliptical Marquee
Set Selection To: ellipse
Top: 356 pixels
Left: 309 pixels
Bottom: 403 pixels
Right: 471 pixels
With Anti-alias

Stroke
Stroke Width: 2
Location: center
Opacity: 100%
Mode: normal
Color: HSB color
Hue: 360°
Saturation: 100
Brightness: 100

Deselect
Set Selection To: none

Flatten Image
2010-08-09T15:19:05+01:00 File history log.jpg saved
Save As: JPEG
Quality: 6
Matte: none
In: Macintosh HD:Users:jeffesktop:history log.jpg
With Lower Case

Auto Tone
Levels With Auto

Levels
Levels Preset Kind: Custom
Adjustment: levels adjustment list
levels adjustment
Channel: composite channel
Input: 57, 255

Unsharp Mask
Unsharp Mask Amount: 57%
Radius: 0.3 pixels
Threshold: 18

2010-08-09T15:20:28+01:00 File history log.jpg saved
Save As: JPEG
Quality: 6
Matte: none
In: Macintosh HD:Users:jeff: Desktop:
With Lower Case

Super to have the original. I could not resist working on it. To get right to the very bottom one would need the raw file, but I think the result now is adequate do demonstrate the idea.

i actually like the original. i think i would crop from the top of the head down and play with the levels to bring out the arms in the water and play with the light a bit. I like the lightness of it and i like to see body parts in water. Ill take a go of it later. Nice shot

taknbyd wrote in post #10686827
First off let me say thanks so much for the AWESOME feedback... I have learned so much about photography on these forums because of people like Rsyx, TRune, and Pixelmangler... It's nice to see what a great community we have on here. And I really appreciate the comments...

Pixelmangler, I can't express the thanks for taking the time to critique my photo the way that you have done... What an awesome lesson in photography and postprocessing... As to the smug marks in the photo that look like were made from brush strokes... Those were foliage hanging from the tree that we were under... The cropping that you made makes total sense and I can't believe that I didn't even notice ( I still have tons to learn). And I didn't even think about the green tint making the subject look nauseas, as Rsyx first mentioned... And what a difference you have made in the photo, Pixel.. You are truly an artist and thanks so much again for taking the time to critique in such detail. Once I get back home I will have to see what I can do with the image and I will post my work after I am done...

I shoot in Raw format but due to having to post it on the forums I run everything throught photobucket cause I don't know any other way to post on here.... But here is the original image if you guys want to have a crack at it... Once again, thanks so much... I really can't express that enough...

TRune.... How did you go about blurring out the nostril reflections in the water? I'm having a little bit of difficulty... Thanks...

taknbyd wrote in post #10689720
TRune.... How did you go about blurring out the nostril reflections in the water? I'm having a little bit of difficulty... Thanks...

Well, that was actually the most difficult part of that photo. It is done by many layers of clone stamping from different areas. Both color and strength are varied. After the first cloning the color of the water was changed to dark green, and that revealed that further cloning was necessary. I thing the total number of layers during the process was 10-12.

The total process was like this:
1. Face and shoulders was lightened up approx. 0,5 steps.
2. Hair cleanup by cloning in the face
3. Skin softening.
4. Water as described above
5. Sharpening of the output result