Not looking to open up new can of worms, just get technical advice...

[Iron Flatline]

By the way, one of the great "rainy day afternoon" activities is taking shots from a few years ago, and re-processing them as your skills increase over time.

 

[Peacemaker636]

I understand that some people want to look perfect and better than normal, but those two posted pics are so overdone (mainly the first one) that it looks less human and more like a manufactured doll.

I'm all for taking out imperfections and making people look better, but when they begin to stop looking human, then you've gone too far.

Also, JenPena, I think zooming in and/or using a wide aperture should make subjects stand out against a background (also helps if the background is a distance from the subject and if it isn't interesting). Also, you can post-process a photo so that the background is less distracting (remove distractions, blur it more). Mainly though, for the person in the portrait to stand out and look very clear is to have a blurry background.

 

[markc]

By the way, one of the great "rainy day afternoon" activities is taking shots from a few years ago, and re-processing them as your skills increase over time.

Egads. That's been on my list for a while now for most of my images. It's been a number of years for some of them, and I've learned a lot in the mean time. Thankfully I have the original scans to start over on and I don't have to dig out my SCSI card.

 

[ksmattfish]

I agree that the skin treatment on those two examples given seems overdone to me...

I'm in total agreement about those two examples. There are numerous examples on the website that are obviously retouched, but not so over the top. Many look very nice. Without talking to the photog we don't know what was going on there. Maybe she was dealing with some really bad acne or psorisis. Maybe that's exactly the look the client wanted.

It is definately important to take the time to get to know the client, understand what they want/need, and be able to deliver it, or turn down the job. I'll do retouching if it is within my ability to do it without being so obvious. I regularly have beautiful, young women (who need no retouching at all) come to me with examples from high dollar fashion mags that look very similar to those examples. Garish to me, to them it's perfection. I usually let them know that it's not my style, and they would probably be better off with another photog. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If it were up to me all of my portraits would be close-ups done with BW 4x5, and enlarged to huge, imperfection magnifying glory. So far I'm not getting many folks who want to pay me for that; very few even have the courage to let me do it for free. Maybe someday.

 

[RMThompson]

JenPena - I CHALLENGE you to post a few of your pictures. I too get paid to take pictures, and sometimes I get insanely jealous of the real PROS on here, and also feel like I dont know what I am doing.

People explained exposure and aperature to me 100 times, but I only "got it" when I started taking pictures. I would take the same picture several times, using different techniques. I remember one day at the park I took 30 pictures of the same tree, trying different things out, and not one of those was something I thought was "worthy".

Do what everyone does. Go take some pictures of some generic, still object and get used to it. Go outside and to the obligatory "flower" shot. Try out your cameras settings, but its smart to do it on full manual mode and control everything yourself. If your camera has a vivid mode or black and white or another special color mode, try it... you never know what you're going to get! LOL

PLEASE post something here. I really want you to, I want to see and we all want to help. Trust me. If you want to meet rude, mean and very critical photogs, this is NOT the place... (if you really do want to, try www.eatpoo.com , on the photo forum... very good but very eilitist).

 

[RMThompson]

By the way ksmattfish, I am in love with this photo:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2709/2155/1600/11Tenn.jpg

 

[Alex_B]

yes, PLEASE post

it does not hurt! and most people will try to help. And might even find good things about your photography, not just bad things

improvement comes often through exposure to other peoples opinions.

 

[Whippersnappers]

I think she used that blur skin technique. I use it ALL the time, but she needs to be lowering the opacity on that layer MUCH more. I liked most of her work. LOVE her site.

I think the lens you use makes all the difference. I use my 50 1.8 for most of my portraits.

 

[Alex_B]

I think the lens you use makes all the difference. I use my 50 1.8 for most of my portraits.

yes, i think apart from her sometimes overdone PSing, she knows what she does well.

you use a 50? on full frame or on crop? I have a 50 on full frame, but it sometimes appears to short for me. I do not have a dedicated portrait lens yet.

 

[Peanuts]

Oh hey, I think I will just throw a few comments in prior to doing some calc.

Firstly, Azuth I hate to say this but I believe you should remove those images from your site. You never know how an individual might react to you 'stealing' (even though we all know those aren't your intentions) images from her site - especially seeing as this thread is very accesible by her if she searches her web address.

Secondly, on the skin smoothing, I am leaning towards a program that is intended for noise removal or skin smoothing called Kodak Gem Filter or something. This can be very effective, as I have seen it used several times, but can be very easy to overuse. (As seen in Image #1 )

Enough rambling - I am off.

 

[Alex_B]

Secondly, on the skin smoothing, I am leaning towards a program that is intended for noise removal or skin smoothing called Kodak Gem Filter or something. This can be very effective, as I have seen it used several times, but can be very easy to overuse. (As seen in Image #1 )

But this is not related to GEM(TM) - Grain Equalization & Management?
These are algorithm usually used to reduce film grain in scans and digital noise. It comes with most semipro and pro film scanners.

I finally gave up on it for grain removal at it always did a rather lousy job in landscape or architectural images, as you lose a lot of detail for just a rather small amount of noise loss. At least for those two purposes there is much better software out there, NeatImage and NoiseNinja (which might be less effective for skin smoothing though ) ... but I highly reccomend those two.

 

[Peanuts]

But this is not related to GEM(TM) - Grain Equalization & Management?
These are algorithm usually used to reduce film grain in scans and digital noise. It comes with most semipro and pro film scanners.

Hmm, interesting. Perhaps that is what 'GEM' does stand for in this case - you learn something new every day. But I do know this filter (which can be found here: http://www.asf.com/products/) is becoming rather popular with some portrait photographers.

 

[markc]

I think it's the Airbrush plug-in that I've heard mentioned over at Glamour Garage a few times. That one is specific to skin smoothing.

 

[Azuth]

I think it's the Airbrush plug-in that I've heard mentioned over at Glamour Garage a few times. That one is specific to skin smoothing.

Excellent. Automatic plastic people. Perhaps we'd be better off spraying people with a polymer coating before they go out the door in the morning, that way they can look like their photo's all the time.

That is perhaps a little harsh, I have nothing against retouching for the purposes of removing blemishes, wrinkles, shadows, extra head, whatever. It's just when people are made to look plastic (like many in the link to that plugin) I find them silly.

 

[markc]

The examples look extreme to me too, but I guess you can dial it back so that it's not so drastic.