An older photo

[Mad_Gnome]

Just got a chance to play around with it in PS today. I'm much happier with the modified version. I'll post it here in modified form and in its original state to give you an idea of how much I changed it.

Original:

Retouched:

 

[LaFoto]

Your modified version makes it a lot stronger!

Women of that age would not be overly happy to have their skin modelled out like this, but it sure works for a male face!

I take it this was a candid photo?
Where was he?
Where do the two catchlights in his eyes come from (which I like, mind you!)?

I feel like this should go into our new forum on People and Pets...

 

[markc]

The b&w one is stronger. I'd like it more if the nose/forehead wasn't blown out.

 

[Mad_Gnome]

Thank you for the comments!

This was taken at my older half-brother's house at a Christmas party in '05. I had only recently bought my Minolta 5D and 50/1.4 and I packed it along for the trip. This was a candid portait of my sister-in-law's brother-in-law. I just thought he had a fascinating face, and managed to get this one without him realizing it. The catchlights are from a chandelier in the kitchen, as he was watching his wife and sister-in-law cooking.

I think instead of Curves adjustments, I think I'll try dodging and burning next time. It seems to produce better results. That should help to keep the highlights from getting blown out in the future.

 

[markc]

The dodge/burn tool is destructive. By that I mean that the relationship between pixels can be destroyed and there's no going back. With curves, unless you force an area to pure white or pure black, there is still a difference between one pixel and the next. Plus, if you use adjustment layers, you can go back and change the curve.

I'd personally stick with the curves tool. I'd just be a bit more careful with it. You can tweak the curve near the top right to try and prevent the burn-out. If the line mashes up against the top or the bottom of the box, putting another point in to prevent that can help a lot.

 

[Mad_Gnome]

Gave this one another go this morning. The more I work at this, the better I like my results. It's also giving me more confidence in working with Photoshop, which I have to admit was a bit intimidating for a long time. Now that I've worked with it some and experimented with some techniques (while always remembering to keep an untouched original, of course) I see that it's not as complicated as I originally thought. It's a lot of simple steps strung in sequence. There's nothing really magical or miraculous about it. I'm more confident now that it won't take me 20 years to learn how to post-process my images. Anyway, here's my newest try, just getting aquainted with the effects.