Challenge, optimize this pic of my son

[Ivan Garcia]

I took this picture of my son at the local shopping centre Burger King.
Having finished his treat, he looked bored as my wifeand I were deciding on the next shop to visit.
I wanted to capture his boredom, so I decided to give the image a dreamy quality. I used a large aperture in order to achieve this. Below is the jpg the camera produced, no cs treatment.
Sorry, no raw file, as the camera was set for jpg, (no room in my card).
You can get the full size jpg Here

[Mary Bull]

Originally Posted by Ivan Garcia

I took this picture of my son at the local shopping centre Burger King.
Having finished his treat, he looked bored as my wifeand I were deciding on the next shop to visit.
I wanted to capture his boredom, so I decided to give the image a dreamy quality. I used a large aperture in order to achieve this. Below is the jpg the camera produced, no cs treatment.
Sorry, no raw file, as the camera was set for jpg, (no room in my card).
You can get the full size jpg [url= http://www.ledb.co.uk/ivan/Boredoom.]

Ivan, I truly love this picture.

I did save it to my Desktop and spent about a half an hour working with it in LightZone.

I wanted to put the focus more closely on his face, so I cropped the lefthand side, in order to eliminate the counter and the bright highlights.

Then I drew Regions around the remaining background highlights and lessened their luminosity, and then I blurred them by adjusting the Gaussian radius.

To reduce the highlights on his face, and emphasize his pensive look, I backed the luminosity down. Then I chose Lighten in the Blend menu, so that the entire image would not be too dark.

Finally, I wanted to bring out his beautiful eyes and the beautiful winged appearance of his eyebrows. So, with my heart in my mouth lest I sharpen too much, I drew a Region around his head and sharpened that part of the photo by 8 per cent.

I did all this treatment in LightZone.



Please let me know what you think of what I did.

Mary

[Ivan Garcia]

Hi Mary.
Thank you . I like this picture too. My son is very photogenic, and the camera seems to love him as much as I do.
You have done a really good job with it, although I am sure you will do better, once you get used to the software you are using. Some of the highlights you drew on are a bit obvious, but is interesting as an idea; I will try and explore this in a future version.
The intensity of the highlights was the trade off for the limited DOF I wanted in the picture.
The way you have concentrated in the face is also of interest.
Again this is something worth taking a look at.
I wanted to give the picture an intense feel of dreamy loneliness, so I though having some of the background would work well. I decided to frame him to the right, so that his gaze does not lead you to the background, and leaves the viewer wondering what is it that he is looking at. Also, I decided to slightly incline the horizon, so as to lead nicely on to the boy.
Asher mentioned that when it comes to different interpretations, not having a title on the picture gives free range to the imagination, and you are using yours to good effect. It is always fascinating to see other people’s renditions.
All in all, a very worthy effort.
Well done.
Kind regards
Ivan (IGD)

[Brian Lowe]

Hi Ivan,

Here is my rendition of the photo I'll title it "I am so bored I am turning blue".


Here is what I did, opened in Lightroom adjusted the Grayscale Mixer sliders to my liking. Then I adjusted the Slit Toning sliders to giving the highlights a yellow tint and the shadows a blue tint.

And lastly cropped the photo.

All processing was done with Adobe Lightroom


Enjoy,
Brian

[Asher Kelman]

Mary,

I have not any skill in lightzone. However, my understanding is that one can set a feather margin around the selctions. This is something one needs to do so that the area changed is not sharply defined. One can then add a gray color sampled from neighboring structures to fill that selected portion and then blend it back.

However, I'd do this to just get one base layer. I would prefer to repair the defects in another layer in which I would clone the correct texture and tones from the adjacent seats so that the defects would be rebuilt. I might duplicate that repaired layer and blur it and blend this back slightly and then blend this back to the original layer.

I'm not sure whether or not LightZone has layers?

Now I am not sure what the advantage of reducing the highlights on the boys face, as htey do not seem blown out on my monitor. Still, Mary, your final result is O.K. and I commend you for the large effort. There are few people I know who's tackle this outside of PS!

Again, your subtle sharpening is in the right direction. At last, nothing pops out to attack me!

Asher

[Asher Kelman]

Normally, Brian, I delete pictures before answering. Here I need to see it again as you have moved to a different color world and I need to get myself orientated to it!

I find the picture stangely haunting and even provocative. Perhaps the boy has done something he knows is wrong or he's shy here, I can't figure out. It's that ambiguity which the title, "I'm so Bored I am turning blue" doesn't resolve.

This shows that at the time an image appears on the computer screen, an entirely new creation can be conceived. Here, of course, Brian is truly the new artist providing one of the progeny that the original image sired.

However, IMHO, this new look at the image, de novo, could in fact have been performed by Ivan. Still, since the boy is actually his own son, his loyalty problably limits some creations he might have made.

Brian, you have made an original contribution.

Totally unexpected! now what would ben Lifson say?

Asher

P.S. Brian, if you do this, I wonder what Nikolai would come up with!!

Originally Posted by Brian Lowe

Hi Ivan,

Here is my rendition of the photo I'll title it "I am so bored I am turning blue".


Here is what I did, opened in Lightroom adjusted the Grayscale Mixer sliders to my liking. Then I adjusted the Slit Toning sliders to giving the highlights a yellow tint and the shadows a blue tint.

And lastly cropped the photo.

All processing was done with Adobe Lightroom


Enjoy,
Brian

[Mary Bull]

Originally Posted by Ivan Garcia

Hi Mary.
Thank you . I like this picture too. My son is very photogenic, and the camera seems to love him as much as I do.
You have done a really good job with it, although I am sure you will do better, once you get used to the software you are using. Some of the highlights you drew on are a bit obvious, but is interesting as an idea; I will try and explore this in a future version.

The highlights were already there; I just tried to tone them down somewhat.
I thought what I did was rather obvious, myself, but I am inexperienced and couldn't figure out how to mitigate the "painted over" look.

The intensity of the highlights was the trade off for the limited DOF I wanted in the picture.

They work in the uncropped picture, as you framed it.

And I understand your choice of framing better, now that you have explained the composition to me.

I guess I just was thinking of a conventional portrait head shot, and I went for the lovely bone structure of his face, the pensive eyes and mouth, and the winged eyebrows.

But I'm sure you already have such conventional portraits of your son.

So this picture is special because of the situation and the environment. Therefore I agree that your composition is better than my crop.

The way you have concentrated in the face is also of interest.
Again this is something worth taking a look at.

Well, there are two possible subjects in the photo. Your own vision which you expressed in the framing, plus the title "Boredom" that you gave the picture, tells the primary subject, what you were expressing.

My eye latched on to a secondary subject, the beauty of a young child's face.

But in concentrating on the face, I left your vision behind.

One might call mine--though I did it crudely, from lack of skill--a detail of the main picture. Like in the art books, where pictures of the Sistine chapel copy a part and call it "detail of ..." .

I wanted to give the picture an intense feel of dreamy loneliness, so I though having some of the background would work well. I decided to frame him to the right, so that his gaze does not lead you to the background, and leaves the viewer wondering what is it that he is looking at. Also, I decided to slightly incline the horizon, so as to lead nicely on to the boy.

It is very effective.

Asher mentioned that when it comes to different interpretations, not having a title on the picture gives free range to the imagination, and you are using yours to good effect. It is always fascinating to see other people’s renditions.
All in all, a very worthy effort.
Well done.

Thank you, Ivan, for your kind praise and attention. I did not really feel worthy to try my hand at your challenge, but in the end I decided to show it to you and possibly get a critique of my effort that I could learn from.

Thank you also for explaining how you planned your frame before you took the picture. That is the part of your reply to me that I have learned the most from.

Best wishes,
Mary

[Brian Lowe]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

P.S. Brian, if you do this, I wonder what Nikolai would come up with!!

Knock, knock, Nik are you out there?

[Ivan Garcia]

Thank you Mary.
I wish I could explain to you how to get rid of the highlights without making it obvious, alas, I am learning myself, and I think that Asher, Don, and some of the guys here are more qualified to do that.
I love what you and Brian have done with it, and look forwards for other contributions.
Asher hit the nail in the head, it is because he is my son that I am limited on what I will do with the image, posting it here, is like having a go myself without the guilty feelings :-).
Kind regards
Ivan (IGD)

[Mary Bull]

Originally Posted by Ivan Garcia

Thank you Mary.
I wish I could explain to you how to get rid of the highlights without making it obvious, alas, I am learning myself, and I think that Asher, Don, and some of the guys here are more qualified to do that.

Asher talked to me about it here, even as I was writing to you. It's called "feathering" in LightZone. I simply haven't mastered it yet.

I love what you and Brian have done with it, and look forwards for other contributions.

Yes, I look forward to other contributions, also.

However, I think you captured your original vision with the adjustments you had made to your camera settings, and actually nothing needs to be done to optimize this picture.

Asher hit the nail in the head, it is because he is my son that I am limited on what I will do with the image, posting it here, is like having a go myself without the guilty feelings :-).

If he were mine, I would not even have been able to post the photo here. I would want to hoard him all to myself! < said with a smile of pleasure >

Mary

[Mary Bull]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

Mary,

I have not any skill in lightzone. However, my understanding is that one can set a feather margin around the selctions. This is something one needs to do so that the area changed is not sharply defined. One can then add a gray color sampled from neighboring structures to fill that selected portion and then blend it back.

Yes, that it is how it works in LightZone. There is an inner and an outer region line. One does the feathering in the space between the two lines.

I didn't think to use the zoom function and get those spaces large enough to work with. So I had very tiny areas to deal with, and that's why my feathering wouldn't work.

Actually, I shouldn't have put the photo up, but should have continued trying to express my idea less crudely. But my interest in communicating with Ivan overwhelmed my good judgment.

However, I'd do this to just get one base layer. I would prefer to repair the defects in another layer in which I would clone the correct texture and tones from the adjacent seats so that the defects would be rebuilt. I might duplicate that repaired layer and blur it and blend this back slightly and then blend this back to the original layer.

I'm not sure whether or not LightZone has layers?

It has the equivalent of layers, in that one can stack the tools.

In fact, that's what I did. When one calls a new tool, the changes one has applied to the regions become a permanent layer. In the new tool, one can draw more regions, or one can apply that tool's changes to the entire image.

I have stacked up to thirty tools in LightZone. However, if I get too many, it will suddenly close without warning. I am running LZ 1.62, because I could not master the eyedropper in beta v. 2.0. I think this sudden closing defect has been corrected in the beta. But in v. 1.62, color management is attended to with sliders. And that's much easier for me.

Now I am not sure what the advantage of reducing the highlights on the boys face, as htey do not seem blown out on my monitor.

It's not that they were blown.

It's that after I did the crop--which was my first move--the background highlights jumped out even more brilliantly. And after I crudely painted over them, then the normal highlights on the boy's face jumped out.

I wanted him darkened a bit anyway, to emphasize the pensiveness of his look. To me he looks more pensive than bored. But I take his father's word for it that he was bored.

Anyway, to darken the image, I reduced the luminosity. LightZone has a blend menu, but selecting "darken" or even selecting "shadows" on it darkened the face too much. Also, wih the darken blend, the highlights contrasted with the rest of the face even more.

So, I backed the luminosity down. Then I used the Lighten choice from the blend menu, to counter-act the dullness that reducing the luminosity brought in.

The result is not much different, actually, from the boy's appearance in the uncropped picture. Somehow, cropping it changed my perception of the light and dark areas of the image, and that's why I did all the work I've described above.

Still, Mary, your final result is O.K. and I commend you for the large effort. There are few people I know who'd tackle this outside of PS!

Thank you for your praise, Asher.

I am moved to comment in reply to your last sentence, though, that we all know the old saying, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." < said with a smile >

Again, your subtle sharpening is in the right direction. At last, nothing pops out to attack me!

< Rolling On the Floor Laughing > I'm making an earnest effort to leave most of the sharpening and attacking activity to my two cats. LOL

Mary