League Photo

[AprilRamone]

I feel like it's lacking something. Any suggestions on what you would do? (I should've used my flash as fill I think. But, I was feeling extremely frustrated with my fellow teammates and had to set up the shot and get my sister to actually take it while I jumped in on the side).

 

[NJMAN]

I think its lacking some contrast. Its got that familiar digital haze look. You can punch up the contrast by doing an S shape in Curves or use USM at settings 40, 60, and 1. But I would do it on the original size image of course, and then resize for web.

 

[AprilRamone]

Ok, so I sharpened it some and I felt like the faces all needed to be brighter. I think it helped a little with the contrast issue.

 

[skieur]

I would use a graduated blue filter to tone down the brightness of the sky.

skieur

 

[AprilRamone]

Hi Skieur, thanks for the tip about the sky, but I have no idea how to do what you are talking about. Want to give me some detailed steps? Pretty please?

 

[Garbz]

In photoshop add an adjustment layer for curves, levels or something. Make the image dark. Ignore the people and look just at the sky till it works. WHen you're finished click the layer mask and make a gradient fill white at the top black at the bottom. The result should look like this:

At least I think that's what skieur was talking about, and of course less rushed and more natural looking:

 

[Alpha]

Sorry but how is that more natural? Half of them are glowing.

 

[Universal Polymath]

Sorry but how is that more natural? Half of them are glowing.

Yeah, but look at AprilRamone's original. They looked like that before, too.

Sky looks good, Garbz - Nice edit! I would just burn out some of the background around the people now, though. Now that sky is darker, the glow around the people is much more conspicuous.

 

[Alex_B]

there is something very odd about this image ... already in the original.

did you brighten up the people in the foreground in post processing? You certainly did not use a fill flash. The girls look very out of place due to the strange effect (the glow mentioned by Max is part of this)

 

[AprilRamone]

Yes, I already said I didn't use the fill flash even though I had brought it because we were in a rush...and my sister had to take the actual shot, not me. This is the original. I wanted to expose for the background and just try and save the rest of the shot in PS because the whole point of the photo was to make sure we had the Denver skyline in it.

 

[AprilRamone]

I think maybe I just went too overboard with lightening up the gals in the second one posted. I have to go back in and put some new faces on the some of the gals and I have to rework it anyway. I'll post the results...

 

[wildmaven]

When you do your lightening, watch out for that blonde girl at the back near the center (in the red shirt). In all the other lightening attempts, she just seems to be much brighter than the others.

Your "messy" border also puts some rather distracting elements into the sky, almost like UFOs...

What kind of league is this where people wear fishnets???

Marian

 

[AprilRamone]

Ugh, I'm having trouble! I went to layers->make a new adjustment layer-> and tried levels, curves, color balance, hue/saturation etc..and none of them do anything to the sky when I adjust the levels. Garbz how did you actually get the blue color in there???

 

[AprilRamone]

Marian,
We play roller derby and wear lots of fishnets I'll probably clone out some of the messy border in the finished version. Thanks for pointing that out.

As far as the whole glowing feel of this, I think some of it just has to do with the fact that there is a lot of weird backlighting due to the big lake behind us and the sun setting. I tried to tone it down some in the new version, but the lighting just kind of makes it have a somewhat cut and pasted onto the background feel to it! Anyway, I want to see if I can figure out the blue sky thing before I post it again...someone help please!

 

[D-50]

As far as I can tell that sky is blown out, your not going to pull anything from that. Try shadow Highlight filter in combination with an increase in contrast, this should do a good job on the girls. Just be sure to tone down the shadow highlight filter its default is 50 and that is usually way to much. I infd that if used correctly that filter is extremely useful.