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Evening portrait

Eugene Ye

New member
Hi,

This is my first post; seeing the posts here and I am glad to be here.


zz01.jpg


Eugene Ye: Evening Portrait


Please give your comment/critique to this recent work of mine.

Thanks.
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Hi, Eugene, and welcome!

The model and the pose are exquisite! What equipment are you shooting with? And what editing software do you have? This is a promising image but the highlights are blown. I would also crop below the elbow to avoid the chopped off feel.

I hope to see more of your images. Also, feel free to comment on any of mine. I especially welcome when the problems with my work are pointed out as that's how I learn.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi,

This is my first post; seeing the posts here and I am glad to be here.


zz01.jpg


Eugene Ye: Evening Portrait


Eugene,

Welcome! glad you found us.

This picture has a pleasant tentative nature with the girl appearing to pause to look into the frame frame to have to say hello but she has to rush off shortly! What does that? Well she's incompletely shown and cut of in awkwardly. Notice the major crucifix is cropped off. Why have something so strong pull our attention away from face?

I wonder why the picture is so light? Did you intend to do this? It can, of course be "corrected" but that may not be your wish. When we see more of your work, this can be judged as an artistic nuance you choose but for now it seems like it's accidental as there's loss of detail and shadowing that build face character.

Tell us more about this one picture and how it came to be taken. We'd love to see more!

Asher
 
Last edited:

Eugene Ye

New member
Thanks Rachel, Asher,

Appreciate it.

I used Sigma 70-200 f2.8 on Sony A300 for this shot. I 'developed' this from the raw file using Sony's supplied Image Data Converter.

I am still struggling to learn the art of cropping. Why some people crop at certain area, I think I still have a really long way to learn on this.

The crucifix is a big mistake on my part, I didn't notice this crop until Asher mentioned it. Thanks. Asher, when you say something so strong, do you mean the crucifix itself or a cropped crucifix?

Yes, you can say it is kind of accidental. I took two photos of this. The other is much more contrasty and properly exposed. When I first saw this photo, I had thought to reduce the exposure when I post-process it, but I turn out to like the lightness and color, and instead increase it a tad brighter (which I know is risky).

What I wanted was to have the hair light through the sunset light. Model's right is lighted by the sun ray. Her left hair is lighted by a reflector.

Thanks
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Eugene,

A great idea to use the sun and a reflector. To bring back the density of the face and clothes simple add a curves layer in Photoshop. You don't need any fancy version. PS 7 will do fine for almost everything! Just add a curves layer and set it in the layers paleete to multiply and then decrease the percent of this layer to taste, here about 60%, I'd imagine. for an extra improvement in the dimensionality add another curve layer with just a slight S-Curve layer.

Look up the terms as there are countless free tutorials on line.

Good start!

Asher
 

Eugene Ye

New member
Thanks Asher.

I have made the change. Looks nicer, more contrast, but the yellowish color cast contrast looks quite abit too much.


DSC02654_asher.jpg


btw, I don't have PS license, so I use gimp instead. I added a layer and multiplied it, and change the curve.

Rachel, I have checked out your photos, very nice, I like them. Thanks for the sharing. Look forward for more.
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Hello Eugene,
Well clearly this image is badly overexposed. The true solution here is to re-shoot the portrait. This is basically usable only as a personal memento, in my opinion. But let's move forward anyway as a purely academic exercise for onlookers.

Alain makes a very keen point that you should note; establishing a black point (i.e. the darkest tone) is essential to re-index all other tones above it. That is, attempting to dial-down the luminosity while manitaining most of their relationships.

My own perspective here has been that the only practical recovery would involve not only this obvious luma adjustment but also great adjustments to the color (chroma). When an image is this badly exposed the color relationships can also being to disintegrate. This breakdown often begins to appear as funky color contrasts even after the luma as been adjusted. It's usually not possible to recover these chroma relationships.

Using some brief techniques I was able to recover the (relatively) pleasent monotone portrait of this lovely girl below.

p350842288-4.jpg

To create this conversion I used the following technique.

Imported into Photoshop CS4 using the RAW converter. Yes, even though this is an 8-bit JPG file, the Adobe RAW converter is really a powerful tool for making many tonality adjustments. Here I used the RAW converter's "Auto" function to quickly make the luma adjustment, reaching a better black point and making some very modest highlight recovery.

Once the image was in CS4 I then used Nik Software's Silver Efex utility to make the final adjustments. Neutral conversion, Brightness: -27, Structure: +16. I also applied a dark vignette to constructively futher tone-down those distracting hot corners and place the image's visual center on the girl's face.

I hope my notes are useful. Take greater care with your metering in the future. Learn to get a feel for manually controlling exposure. Far, far too many new snappers today don't take time to learn how their camera responds to various lighting. They just set a program mode and then hope for the best (and blame the camera for the worst).
 

Andy brown

Well-known member
Likewise. The B&W is very nice. Ken is a genius we all know that but without Eugene's original capture of the 'moment' we'd have nothing.
The progression of this image in this thread is quite amazing.
Can it go any further from here?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Likewise. The B&W is very nice. Ken is a genius we all know that but without Eugene's original capture of the 'moment' we'd have nothing.
The progression of this image in this thread is quite amazing.
Can it go any further from here?

Andy,

For the academic exercise you can take Ken's B&W result and use it to define the tone in a new mage where you will combine it with the original processed to rebuild the color. One might attempt to correct the original color and then blend a layer of "correct" appealing skin color into the skin.

Asher
 

Eugene Ye

New member
Thanks Alain, Ken,

Appreciate your inputs. I didn't know about this true black point. Is it something inherent to photo to let viewer visualise the range (black and white). or is it meant for post-processing alone?

Thanks :)

// Eugene
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
zz01.jpg


Eugene Ye: Evening Portrait

Eugene You: Evening Portrait

Original



DSC02654_ACR_AK_.jpg


Eugene You: Evening Portrait

Processed from Sony RAW in CS4


Eugene,

Thanks for allowing me to explore this image.

I processed the Sony RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw. Capture One couldn't open the file but likely I could try and download the necessary patch for that. The blow out on the left cheek had no data and that can be simply repaired in touch up. Also one might consider perhaps removing stray hairs or perhaps keeping them to allow one to see the spontaneity of the moment. The red marks on her right forearm can similarly be addressed. So really, there's no reason to give up on such a nice snapshot.

I tried out Bart Van Der Wolfe's sharpening technique of what I thought was an amazingly large radius of 50 pixels and just 10% and used the luminosity to fade to 70%. Frankly I'd be happy with this.

Asher

I'll send you the full size file without the © markings.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Wow. I'll need to look at that (Adobe Camera Raw).
Rachel,

It's likely that CS5 might be better. One can also do local changes in ACR now in CS4 onwards. So a red ear or darkened eye sockets can be dealt with at this stage. Still, the program you have to get is Capture One by Phase One the camera back maker, who are brilliant. Unfortunately I don't have the patch for that Sony camera although it's possible it exists. I just did not check what camera it is, LOL! Nicolas Claris took me to task for being slow to switch to Capture oOne LOL! Now I'm hooked!

Asher
 

Eugene Ye

New member
Thanks for the editing Asher, it really opens my eyes on how much difference photoshop and raw can. Bart Van Der Wolfe's is also something new to me and googling got me back to opf. This community is really evolving as a knowledgebase
 
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