Darkish

[kanuski]

I am not really into the blood and guts but I do enjoy taking pictures with a darker mood. Halloween is coming soon so I have been planning a few more shoots with the dark theme. Any C&C is always appreciated.
1.

2.

3.

4.

I also have a Flickr album with a few more of these.

 

[sscarmack]

Really like number 3!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mmaria]

yeah, #3 for me also

#1 would be nice with some more pp work

jmo of course

 

[kanuski]

Thank-you both. I have learned more about pp since taking #1 but am nowhere near competent in Photoshop. What would you do to #1?

 

[mmaria]

opened it in cs6,
- cropped from the upper right corner to make her bigger in the frame
- applied shadows/highlights adjustment, played with opacity - then I realized that her expression is great and that this pic need more time to be spend on it because it's a good photo.
- I played with selective color, bw layer in soft light, brushes, opacities, layer modes, darkening, desaturating etc... it depends really on your taste

anyway, it deserves more time and just as a reference here's a quick edit. her face needs retouching (I don't consider this "finished" but just a quick example)

eta: this monitor is not calibrated so the picture might be too bright

 

[Chiller]

Diggin the light in the last shot, but now seeing the first one edited...thats cool.

 

[Gary A.]

Another fan of #3.

 

[kanuski]

Here is my own edit of the first one. I used a grunge preset in LR and then burned the face.

 

[manaheim]

I know you're going for dark, and that's cool... but in some cases (like above) what you're getting is "underexposed". What you might try is bring it up (quite a bit) and then crank the contrast (or better- apply curves to it). You can also selectively darken sections after the fact.

 

[manaheim]

For example...

This is a curves application. With some more work you could bring her hair out more, but this gives you the idea.

I also did a sharpening on it because it makes it look a little freaky.

 

[kanuski]

I will try with the raw file and post later. Thanks.
Ok, here it is again. I can't remember everything I did but I knocked the blue luminance and saturation all the way down. I wanted to remove the blue sky but it also changed the whole feel of the image. What do you think?

 

[manaheim]

Still too dark and I still think your background is too bright.
Also, the whole image is kind of muddy, IMO.

 

[bribrius]

Still too dark and I still think your background is too bright.
Also, the whole image is kind of muddy, IMO.

when is the last time you said something you LIKED about a photo?

 

[waday]

I like #3, #4, and the edited versions (mmaria and manaheim) of #1.

The button in #3 looks like a smiley face.

 

[manaheim]

Still too dark and I still think your background is too bright.
Also, the whole image is kind of muddy, IMO.

when is the last time you said something you LIKED about a photo?

When was the last time you weren't annoying on TPF?
I'm helping. If you don't like the way I help, you're more than welcome to skip over my posts.
I'd suggest you put me on ignore, but I'm a mod, so you can't.
Neither can I do the same for you... for the same reason.
We're stuck in this hell together. I suggest we do our best to stay away from each other.