Help with Photoshop edit

[Parker219]

Looking for some help on this photo of my daughter. I'm terrible with Photoshop at the best of times. Hoping to create a 16x20 canvas out of this, but need help removing my wife's hands from the shot. Any other adjustments that could improve I'm open to (exposure etc).

Thanks in advance

OP- When you say "looking for help", that is pretty vague. So you will get comments of all types. While the comments about being underexposed didn't come off as YOU would have worded it to someone else, just because it was worded poorly, does mean you should take offense to it.

I think you may be looking too much in to HOW he said it, you gotta have tough skin, you know what I mean?

Why don't you go to the RAW file, edit it with some of the feedback that you have gotten and re-post the photo?


Also I would like to add to Derrel and Lew: You guys have way too much experience and knowledge to not talk / communicate with each other, bounce ideas off each other, get in friendly ( non-personal ) debates with each other, ect.

I hope you guys can work it out.

 

[Overread]

Derrel/Lew - take it to private messages and keep it there. If you can't sort out your differences use the ignore feature and stop dragging other threads off course to have a private argument.

 

[mcflickr]

Thanks everyone - Moving things along, I decided that it would be worthwhile to do a new shoot (even adjusted the concept)... really focused on getting the exposure and composition right the first time, saving time in post to make adjustments. Thanks for all the feedback and edit suggestions - all very much appreciated!

Mike

 

[TheNevadanStig]

As far as how to do it, it's all about the clone tool. It's not hard to use with a little practice. I spent less than 5 minutes editing your picture that day.
And I know you weren't looking for C&C, but I wouldn't throw out what other have said. Simply because you stated you are looking to order a decent sized canvas print. Those things aren't cheap. I would hate to see you lay down good money on one when just starting out. Another month of shooting under your belt and you are going to look at your wall and realize you don't really like the photo, and shouldn't have ordered such a nice print of it.

If you try to redo the shot, there are a few other techniques that will help editing. I won't touch the camera settings and what not as others have already stated those, but the way your wife holds up the baby. If she puts her hands lower in relation to the baby, then comes up babies back to hold her up, it will make for a much neater picture, as you will only have to crop out a small section of arm rather than arms, hands, and fingers. Me and my wife do very similar things with pet sessions as they never stay where you want them either. If you do it like that, a lot of the time you can even simply crop out the arms, and not have to clone.

 

[The_Traveler]

I've taken pictures of babies who can't sit unassisted by seating the mother in a large chair, draping the mother with the backdrop material (like a barber's apron) and letting her seat the baby on/in her lap and support the baby with fabric draped hands..

 

[Bobby Ironsights]

JPEGs have little if any editing head room. Do you have a Raw file?

TPF has a 2.2 Mb file size limit when you upload directly from your computer.

That`s a really handy nugget to know, I had no idea it was so big.

 

[KmH]

That was back then with different forum software.

I think the limit is a bit higher now with this XenForo software.

 

[Jim Walczak]

Well Traveler, I appreciate your response to what I would have considered a moot point. I don't know what bothers me more, the fact that you and KmH have added absolutely nothing of value to this thread, or that you have admonished me for being offended. My personal opinion - KmH was not being helpful, he was being obnoxious. Regardless, let's say for the sake of argument that the two of you (and your supporting member status) are right, and I am wrong.

My humblest apologies for looking for assistance with an edit. Thanks to those who took the time, and even made exposure adjustments (kind of like the ones I referenced when I said to take liberties to "improve" the image).

I have to agree that both of those folks were being a bit snotty...particularly KmH. Yea...sure the shot was a bit under exposed...so? Isn't that one of the reasons we use Photoshop in the first place?? Sometimes the so-called "pros" forget that there's a learning curve and sometimes they try to hold amateurs to their own standards with little consideration to people's feelings or needs.

In some effort to provide some helpful suggestions, first I'd probably send the file over to Adobe RAW for some exposure adjustment. You'll have to Google the procedure as I don't remember it off the top of my head, but you CAN edit a jpeg in Adobe RAW...and it can make a world of difference! While the image is in RAW, I'd probably bump up the "vibrance" and "clarity" and I might play around with the blacks and contrast just a bit too. Once you're satisfied with the adjustments, I'd take the photo back into PS to work on the "arm removal". As we've already seen you're going to need to do some cloning work at the very least. If you're not already familiar with "layers", now would be a good time to read up! I'd start by making a new layer of the base image, then I'd work on the child's dress...use the clone tool (and/or healing brush) to remove the hand from the dress. Once you have that complete, I'd use the lasso tool and create an outline around that section of the dress and copy that to it's own layer (I'll explain why in a bit). To remove the hand/arm from the rest of the edge of the shot, I'd use the lasso tool and grab a bit of the blanket from the opposite side of the image, feather it a tad (maybe 5 to 10 px), make it a new layer, then using "Free Transform", I'd flip it horizontally and move it to the other side of the image to cover over the rest of the arm. You'll want to make sure this layer with the blanket is UNDER the layer you created with the dress...it'll make a sharper outline for the dress as apposed to just trying to clone the flat image. You can even use the Free Transform tool to scale the blanket layer a bit of need be and the "Liquefy" filter to refine the shape of the blanket layer even further. Then, I'd use the clone and/or healing brush a bit to blend the blanket into the background. Finally, I'd duplicate all the layers, then merge those into a single layer on top that will make your new master layer.

Once you have the arm dealt with, I'd add a Levels and a Saturation layer...tweak those out just a bit. You can use curves, but if you're just learning PS, curves can be a bear to work with and both Levels and Saturation do a decent enough job in most cases. I also might (conservatively) burn the shadows just a bit to give the image a bit more "depth" as the lighting is just a tad flat. I'd probably add a bit of USM as a finishing touch...especially for a larger print, you'll likely want to sharpen things up just a tich. In both cases, I'd create new layers for each process. Do be sure to save your image as a new file at various stages, so that you have something to come back to if something goes awry...and never over-write your original file.

As far as the print size goes, I would take KmH's comments there with more than just a pinch of proverbial salt (if you haven't already). Sometimes people who consider themselves to be "pros" tend to forget that not everyone needs pristine, gallery quality prints (for that matter, I've seen a lot of pro work in my time that could hardly be considered "pristine", LOL). The thing to remember is that when you're doing amateur work, "quality" is a lot more subjective than it is for people who are getting payed to do said work for others. To be blunt, I'd hang things in my own living room that I'd probably never print for a client, LOL! Likewise, it's worth remembering that not everyone is going to review your work as critically as a true professional might. I have a vector piece I did back in college that I did as a 40 x 50 print. As the artist, I was a bit dissatisfied that there was some blur (didn't know how to re-scale strokes at that time), but virtually everyone who's seen that print...including the instructor (several of my instructors actually)...has been completely floored by it and it remains in my portfolio to this day. I've also done some very decent 11x14's from my old Sony 5mp H1...a lot of folks will tell you that you can't do it, but it IS possible and with a bit of creativity, you can get some very decent results. Again quality can be a bit subjective and often a matter of perspective. Sadly, a lot of people tend to forget such things...

I'm not sure what the original image size was, but from what I've seen and read, I strongly suspect that with a bit of creative up-sizing in Photoshop, that this would in fact make a very lovely 16x20 canvas print...I'm not really a "baby person" myself, but that's a really cute expression on the kid's face I would suggest working with someone local where you could perhaps do a couple of small test strips on regular paper before paying for the large print to see if you'll be happy with the quality. I do a lot of my large print work thru a local community college where I have access to a 24" Epson and a 44" HP and usually what I'll do is fire off an inch or two...crop a few details at the print size for example, to see if the resolution, color and detail is "good enough"...with the Epson especially, I have to pay extra attention to color because the folks at Epson seem to have their own mind about what RBG means, LOL! Once your happy with the test strips, I'd say go for it and have them fire off a canvas for ya!

Okies...that's about all for now except to say, don't get discouraged and don't let the big boys bully you in any way!

Good luck!

 

[Buckster]

Well, I'm a year late to this party, but for anyone still interested in some of the technical aspects of the discussion, something piqued my interest, so I thought I'd share.

When it comes to up-sizing, my go-to method is Perfect Resize from On1. I've been using it for a LOT of years, since back when it was called Genuine Fractals, and it works great for me. Not that it's perfect, nothing is, but it's as good as it gets, as far as I know, and it gets me there quick and easy. Punch in the output size and pixel dimension wanted, make other adjustments if called for, and done.

I've got a 13 x 19 matted and framed print on my wall that looks great, and I up-sized it from a jpg that was just 800 pixels on the longest side. Although to be fair, when I say "looks great", I mean IF you don't get too close.

But that's the thing about larger prints anyway. The reason I can get away with it is that people tend not to view it too close up. From what I've seen, most people stand back about 5' to look at it, before moving on to another piece. (It's killing me though because I DO look close, and I'm about to reprint from the very-recently-found long-lost original.)

Definitely worth a try, anyway.

 

[Jim Walczak]

blah...forgot to look at the date again! These forums seem to have a lot of older posts.... I have to wonder if the OP ever got that canvas printed and how it turned out.

Oh well.