Be Mine, Or Die (A Valentine's Day Works)

Trenton Romulox · Feb 14, 2008

I did some post-processing on this one. The eyes, teeth, and lips are all creations of post-processing. And there were some contrast, saturation, and shadow adjustments. Shot at f/13, 1/250, using two off-camera SB-800s.

Feel free to critique anything, I just want to get better. Thank you.

Be Mine, Or Die:

lifeafter2am · Feb 14, 2008

Wow... you are a creepy mother-f*er! I think the eyes and the rose are too flat though. The right eye looks real, but the left eye and eye-brow doesn't to me.

Other than that, nice shot!

Trenton Romulox · Feb 14, 2008

I'm not sure how to make just the rose more exposed...anyone know how to go about that? I'm a total n00b in PhotoShop. The only thing I could do was make the eyes and lips and teeth look different. I want to give the rose more brightness.

lifeafter2am · Feb 14, 2008

Create a new adjustment layer and you can "color" on the layer everything except the rose. Then just the rose will be affected within that adjustment layer.

Trenton Romulox · Feb 14, 2008

Color with what? I'm such a rookie HAHA.

lifeafter2am · Feb 14, 2008

The paint brush.

You have to go into your layers dialog, go to Channels and select to make visible the masking layer. Then just color on it everything that you don't want affected.

Trenton Romulox · Feb 14, 2008

Hmm, okay. I've got to write ten essays for environmental science. But I'm gonna certainly keep working on this shot, that is, if you think this shot is worth continuing working on? Are the fundamentals even there?

lifeafter2am · Feb 14, 2008

Trenton Romulox said:
Hmm, okay. I've got to write ten essays for environmental science. But I'm gonna certainly keep working on this shot, that is, if you think this shot is worth continuing working on? Are the fundamentals even there?

I think so, no reason to not continue working on it.

rob91 · Feb 14, 2008

You can try the magic wand to select the rose. When you click the rose it will select everything in that color range, adjust the tolerance for how close the colors have to be to be selected. I'm not sure if it would catch the lips in that, I'm not too much of a pro. If it does draw a rectangular marquee around the rose first...I believe that will work. If you need to click more than once use the buttons at the top toolbar to "add from selection" or "subtract from selection"...also available via alt key I believe. When you have the rose selected go to edit copy then edit paste, it will create a new layer for your rose. Go to your layer and make all the adjustments you want. I'm not sure how you would adjust the exposure, if it is raw you could take it to a raw editor from there (I think, not sure) otherwise just play with hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast.

Ok. I'm just a noob at this so that may not be entirely accurate. I actually just learned how to do this today so I'm stoked to help somebody with it...that is, assuming I got it right.

Puscas · Feb 14, 2008

I'm no expert on PS, so maybe the results will be fine, but wouldn't it be better to reshoot and light the rose? (I know, I'm asking a lot, so if a reshoot is impossible, PS is the only option)

pascal

lifeafter2am · Feb 14, 2008

rob91 said:
You can try the magic wand to select the rose. When you click the rose it will select everything in that color range, adjust the tolerance for how close the colors have to be to be selected. I'm not sure if it would catch the lips in that, I'm not too much of a pro. If it does draw a rectangular marquee around the rose first...I believe that will work. If you need to click more than once use the buttons at the top toolbar to "add from selection" or "subtract from selection"...also available via alt key I believe. When you have the rose selected go to edit copy then edit paste, it will create a new layer for your rose. Go to your layer and make all the adjustments you want. I'm not sure how you would adjust the exposure, if it is raw you could take it to a raw editor from there (I think, not sure) otherwise just play with hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast.

Ok. I'm just a noob at this so that may not be entirely accurate. I actually just learned how to do this today so I'm stoked to help somebody with it...that is, assuming I got it right.

See Adjustment layers for this. You can mask anything you don't want to adjust, and use all the normal adjustment for certain parts of your images.

kundalini · Feb 14, 2008

That's sick dude.

One thing I see is that you have the teeth going from yellow to white on flash side, but the lips remain constant red. Doesn't look right to me.

rob91 · Feb 14, 2008

Scratch that. The blacks in the rose make it too difficult. I think you're better off with the magnetic lasso tool to encircle the rose then do what you want to it. Just click once on the border and drag it around...

rob91 · Feb 14, 2008

lifeafter2am said:
See Adjustment layers for this. You can mask anything you don't want to adjust, and use all the normal adjustment for certain parts of your images.

How do you get an adjustment layer?

Oh yeah, trent, creepy as hell man. Like the Joker from "The Dark Knight". I dig it.