What can I do with this?

Karri · Jan 1, 2011

Okay, so I took some pictures today of a 12 day old baby. I had to rig it up as I am still waiting on my external flash and other equipment to come in (totally stalked the UPS site yesterday) so bash all you want on the lighting but I did what I could with what I had. I did not want to use my pop up flash so I used some lamps and a piece of white foam board. Now I have my pictures and know there are some things I can do to improve the pictures. I am looking for a cleaner, softer look for the pictures.

I have seen a lot of things you whizzes have done before with other pictures and I made sure to shoot in RAW so I wouldn't lose as much detail if I underexposed the pictures.

Please share anything I can do with this - I did take it into PSE 6, added a Gaussian Blur layer and erased the blur over the baby so the background looks softer but the blur looks too hard around the baby and too obvious. I am including the original and the one I did in PSE 6 just to see what I have.

Thanks in advance!!
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Geaux · Jan 1, 2011

If you are going to mask out an area to blur around, at least make the edges around it perfect lol. Across the whole bottom you missed the tracing of the subject....before blurring.

Robin Usagani · Jan 1, 2011

When you mask it, you need to add feather. It should be one of the slider when you do a selection.

GeorgieGirl · Jan 1, 2011

Too green on the #2 blur.

Karri · Jan 1, 2011

Yeah - I didn't like how hard the eraser was when I was erasing around the baby and it totally ruined the image for me. I didn't mask it but I was looking for the feather option and couldn't find it. I did a new layer and then blurred that whole layer with my background layer separate. Is that what you mean by masking?

Thank ya'll! Any other options I can do to make it mo betta? :lol:

OrionsByte · Jan 1, 2011

Karri said:
Yeah - I didn't like how hard the eraser was when I was erasing around the baby and it totally ruined the image for me. I didn't mask it but I was looking for the feather option and couldn't find it. I did a new layer and then blurred that whole layer with my background layer separate. Is that what you mean by masking?

Masking is kind of like covering up a window before you paint the wall... it prevents the paint from getting where you don't want to.

Starting with a separate layer was a good idea, but what you want to do instead of erasing parts of it using the eraser tool is use the selection tool to outline the baby, feather that selection, and then use the selection to create a mask layer. Then you can apply your blur to that layer (with the mask applied) and the baby will be unaffected.

The nice thing about this approach too, is that you can always go in and edit the mask if you realize the selected area needs cleaning up. Getting the selection process right is kind of time consuming when you're first learning it though - be patient!

Karri · Jan 1, 2011

OrionsByte said:
Karri said:

Yeah - I didn't like how hard the eraser was when I was erasing around the baby and it totally ruined the image for me. I didn't mask it but I was looking for the feather option and couldn't find it. I did a new layer and then blurred that whole layer with my background layer separate. Is that what you mean by masking?

Click to expand...

Masking is kind of like covering up a window before you paint the wall... it prevents the paint from getting where you don't want to.

Starting with a separate layer was a good idea, but what you want to do instead of erasing parts of it using the eraser tool is use the selection tool to outline the baby, feather that selection, and then use the selection to create a mask layer. Then you can apply your blur to that layer (with the mask applied) and the baby will be unaffected.

The nice thing about this approach too, is that you can always go in and edit the mask if you realize the selected area needs cleaning up. Getting the selection process right is kind of time consuming when you're first learning it though - be patient!

Thank you! I have been searching on the Internet for ways to do this masking but I hadn't found quite what I was looking for yet. I am off to try what you wrote. Thanks again! :thumbup:

PhotoMama22 · Jan 1, 2011

I'm a beginner @ photography BUT I am a mom & coming from a mom's perspective...I really love the original unedited photo!! When we got pictures of my newborn daughter done I found there was a bit to much editing done to them...just remember that sometimes us parents want to remember our newborn exactly how they are/were...so sometimes a non edited pictures can give us that!

Karri · Jan 1, 2011

PhotoMama22 said:
I'm a beginner @ photography BUT I am a mom & coming from a mom's perspective...I really love the original unedited photo!! When we got pictures of my newborn daughter done I found there was a bit to much editing done to them...just remember that sometimes us parents want to remember our newborn exactly how they are/were...so sometimes a non edited pictures can give us that!

Thank you PhotoMama! I completely understand that point of view and I ended up taking a quick 100 photos so I want to 'spruce' some up to be more like what people pay for and keep some original with maybe a touch of added exposure. This is actually my stepdaughter's new baby so I am going to get lots of practice, hopefully. I have a young daughter who is burnt out on the camera so I am turning my way to him. He won't be able to escape me for awhile! :lol:

PhotoMama22 · Jan 1, 2011

Karri said:
PhotoMama22 said:

I'm a beginner @ photography BUT I am a mom & coming from a mom's perspective...I really love the original unedited photo!! When we got pictures of my newborn daughter done I found there was a bit to much editing done to them...just remember that sometimes us parents want to remember our newborn exactly how they are/were...so sometimes a non edited pictures can give us that!

Click to expand...

Thank you PhotoMama! I completely understand that point of view and I ended up taking a quick 100 photos so I want to 'spruce' some up to be more like what people pay for and keep some original with maybe a touch of added exposure. This is actually my stepdaughter's new baby so I am going to get lots of practice, hopefully. I have a young daughter who is burnt out on the camera so I am turning my way to him. He won't be able to escape me for awhile!

my 2 year old is ALWAYS running away from me-she's sick of having her picture taken!! It looks like you're on your way with the pictures tho! It looks great..and you'll get lots more practice by the sounds of it

clanthar · Jan 2, 2011

Access to the RAW file would change everything and I could do a dramatically better job.

What I did do was lower the contrast and white balance the photo as best I could. I applied a heavy noise filter which also softened the photo.

Joe

Karri · Jan 2, 2011

Thanks clanthar - what program(s) did you use?

swedberg311 · Jan 2, 2011

I lightened the shadows and darkened the highlights then overall brightened the picture, then I created a blured look using a keri meyers toutorial and feathered it for a more natural look, I then removed the red from the skin and softened the skin.

gsgary · Jan 2, 2011

I'm sorry but the lighting is awful, you want nice soft diffused lighting for babies

clanthar · Jan 2, 2011

Karri said:
Thanks clanthar - what program(s) did you use?

I used Photoshop -- the biggest problems were too much contrast and the color shift due to the light color. I assumed the towel was white and the baby's shirt was grey and balanced for that letting the skin tones fall where they did. Then I lowered the contrast by creating a dupe layer of the photo, inverting the dupe and setting the blending mode to soft light. Finally a noise filter strong enough to do a little softening.

As I noted, with the RAW file entirely different processing would allow a much better result than attempts to try and pull something out of a low-res JPEG.

Joe