Another Attempt at Portraits

[KmH]

Use a gray card. Even better is to use a gray card and a color checker.
X-Rite MSCCPP ColorChecker Passport

It sounds like you're using Photoshop Elements? Do you have your camera set to shoot JPEG? Raw? Or both?

 

[Hof8231]

I start with levels then curves then saturation, then brightness and contrast, then shadows and highlights.

I mean a visual. .like sooc shot.

Well, I feel dumb now.

Here's one straight from my camera:

Use a gray card. Even better is to use a gray card and a color checker.
X-Rite MSCCPP ColorChecker Passport

It sounds like you're using Photoshop Elements? Do you have your camera set to shoot JPEG? Raw? Or both?

I'll look into that, thanks! And I'm using Photoshop CS6, shooting in JPEG. I know I should probably start shooting RAW.

 

[frommrstomommy]

No need to feel dumb. This is a quick edit, doing what I mainly do to my images in lightroom.. Aside from cropping, I upped exposure by about 1/3 stop. Adjusted vibrance +29.. not sure how this is done in Photoshop though.. but vibrance is different from saturation. You probably don't want to mess with saturating an image of people as it does weird things to skin tones. Contrast +9, Fill light +30 and +26 recovery.. +25 sharpening and a little noise reduction. I adjusted white balance as well as a little teeth whitening.View attachment 45922

 

[Hof8231]

No need to feel dumb. This is a quick edit, doing what I mainly do to my images in lightroom.. Aside from cropping, I upped exposure by about 1/3 stop. Adjusted vibrance +29.. not sure how this is done in Photoshop though.. but vibrance is different from saturation. You probably don't want to mess with saturating an image of people as it does weird things to skin tones. Contrast +9, Fill light +30 and +26 recovery.. +25 sharpening and a little noise reduction. I adjusted white balance as well as a little teeth whitening.View attachment 45922

Well that looks 1 million times better than mine lol, thank you! And thanks for throwing in what you did to it, I really appreciate it!