Portrait Professional Test

2010 must be the year to get this right.......

Portrait Professional Test
Lighting done with:
430EX - left 60 deg - through 80cm diffuser @ 10 o'clock
580EX on camera - vert bracket - bounced of 1.2m x1.8m silver reflector behind camera right @ 25 deg
A:B Ratio = 2:1 and +2/3FEC

350D
70-200 f4 L
F4 - 1/500 - ISO200

An idea: Retracing one's steps in beauty correction.

Johann van Rensburg said:

2010 must be the year to get this right.......

Portrait Professional Test
Lighting done with:
430EX - left 60 deg - through 80cm diffuser @ 10 o'clock
580EX on camera - vert bracket - bounced of 1.2m x1.8m silver reflector behind camera right @ 25 deg
A:B Ratio = 2:1 and +2/3FEC

350D
70-200 f4 L
F4 - 1/500 - ISO200

Click to expand...

Johann,

The open lighting you have is just right for this portrait. Good choice. I like your demonstration of how well one can work with just two camera flashes and the 350D with the very remarkable 70-200 f4.0 L. have that same lens as my pocket street lens!

The program you have used works well in smoothing out the skin and adding sparkle to the eyes. I find the effect is immediately attractive but then that wears off and I prefer your original. If you didn't allow the program to reshape the face, eyes or mouth, then you can add this final result as one extra layer on top of the original and use perhaps only select portions to the extent of about 20%. The important thing about corrections is to do what's necessary then put it aside and when you return try to add only a small fraction as possible of what you thought was needed.

Why is this so important? The natural variations in the skin and how it diffuses and reflects light is imprinted in our brain. Just allowing the software to do it's job is risking the vitality of your well thought out portrait session. So what do you think?

Asher

Hi,

I think the portrait achieves its purpose very well. There is a little "shining" hair at the right of the head which I don't know if that's a product of the lighting or some "tint" in her hair. Another little point is the ISO. I don't know what you set it to 200 and shooted it at 1/500 but it could be done at half the speed and ISO. There is also a problem with the light, it's showing a diagonal line dividing her face in two halfs (I noticed it now I'm editing the pic). Some of that is because her expression line of the mouth.

The retouching is too much overdone. The skin should be a bit more yellowish. You can achieve that by 2 ways:

The easiest (and most of the time the better) is applying a gradient map sampling the skin tones (darker and brighter) and setting the gradient map to Color in the blending modes and the opacity usually goes around 40%.

Here is the editing (all handwork):


Here is the PSD:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ydt1m104jkd

Let me know if you want me taking down these files.

Hope this helps!

Leo

I've placed your more admirable cosmetic changes as the base layer then made transparent selected feature of an overlying original (with a 24% black brush on a mask) such that we can decide for eack part of her face, how much original and what smoothing is needed.




I's argue, she is beautiful and more wholesome looking!

Asher