Help and C&C please and ty!

natural.disaster · Jul 27, 2010

Even in Auto mode..they were soft and the color was horrible (to me anyway). In manual mode....her skin was soooo orange! Tried changing white balance and some other stuff but couldnt get it right. One thing i didnt think about at the time was that i have it on Vivid....would changing that help?
Here are a few shots after editing in light room. Im still learning how to use the program...and feel i have no concept of what looks good! At first glance i think they looks great, then the more i look at then...the more i think they look fake or over/under done.
Any C&C is appreciated!
I know ill get picked on for the "rule of thirds"...I worked on that this morning as well..more pictures can be found here Flickr: reachingforthestars07's Photostream

I have all the originals and can post them if anyone wants to see the "before" images, or wants to give it a go at editing to kinda show me how they should look.

#1 Posting this one just to get an idea of what others think of the colors...Is it too green, too bright, too "pop"?

#2 Can i fix the sky and trees in lightroom or are they a lost cause? I havent figured out if lightroom allows you to edit only parts of the picture instead of the whole thing.

#3 Does the editing work here?

natural.disaster · Jul 27, 2010

Wow....i guess from the resizing to fit the forum...they look grainy and blotchy posted here...

OrionsByte · Jul 27, 2010

Are you shooting in RAW or JPG? Shooting in Vivid will definitely do strange things to portraits; if you shot it in RAW the original data will still be there, but if you shot it in JPG it's going to take some work to fix it. You can start by desaturating a bit.

#3 is your strongest pic here in my opinion, and the editing is nice, but it looks like the focus was just a bit behind her (look at the tracks to the right), which is why she looks a bit soft.

On #1 and #2 I'm not sure what could be done without seeing the originals. You're probably not going to get much out of the sky and trees on #2.

natural.disaster · Jul 28, 2010

Shooting in RAW.

Here are the originals.....horrible i know..
And an example of Manual mode...

#1 Original

#2 Original

#3 Original

Example of Manual...See how orange her skin is!

natural.disaster · Jul 28, 2010

Anyone else have any comments?
Id like to take her out for more shots in the morning and see if i can get some improvements!

misstwinklytoes · Jul 28, 2010

I think the orange is because of the vivid setting. What lens were you using?

Laika · Jul 28, 2010

Number three is the best. Even though her foot seems slightly awkward. It could be a much better shot if you brought in more tone variance through contrast.

Steve01 · Jul 28, 2010

I just corrected the color balance in #1 and brightened her skin a little.
A flash would have helped here.

Same with #2, I just corrected the color balance and straightend the image.
I don't know about lighroom but in PS you can manipulate a selected area like the sky but I didn't. I left it alone.

Steve01 · Jul 28, 2010

Here's the orange one, color balanced and desaturated.

You say you're shooting in manual.
Shooting in Manual mode just leaves it up to you to determine the proper shutter speed and aperture it's not causing the color problems.

You should stop using any enhancements or special effects in the camera.

When you do you bake that into the jpg and that's what your stuck with.
You should seriously consider RAW if your camera supports it, nothing is baked in, and everything is adjustable to some degree or another.

natural.disaster · Jul 28, 2010

1 & 2 were shot in Auto mode and im pretty sure with flash...ummm....unless it didnt flash...Cant remember..

I am shooting in RAW...however...these were the Jpeg files (after i opened and resaved them). I do have the RAW file for each of them in lightroom.

I think it was the VIVID setting that was causing the orange skin! I took it off VIVID today and the shots look much much better!

Steve...your edits came out very nicely! Especially the last one! TY!

Steve01 · Jul 28, 2010

natural.disaster said:
1 & 2 were shot in Auto mode and I'm pretty sure with flash...ummm....unless it didn't flash...Cant remember..

I am shooting in RAW...however...these were the Jpeg files (after i opened and resaved them). I do have the RAW file for each of them in lightroom.

I think it was the VIVID setting that was causing the orange skin! I took it off VIVID today and the shots look much much better!

Steve...your edits came out very nicely! Especially the last one! TY!

Your Welcome.
Every camera is different but usually shooting in Auto will override any settings you may have setup like choosing RAW or a specific ISO or white balance setting.

You're using Lightroom right, so I'm assuming you're opening the image in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).
Any settings set in the camera like Vivid shouldn't exist if you open the image in ACR.
Those settings (Vivid, B&W, etc.) may be active, accessible, but adjustable if you open the raw file in the raw editor supplied with the camera but not in ACR.

How are you opening your RAW files?
What camera and model are you using, and what is the raw extension?

natural.disaster · Jul 28, 2010

Using Lightroom
Nikon D5000
I just copy them from the card to a fold in my pc then import the entire folder in lightroom.
The one that was so orange...i didnt even try to edit it in lightroom...I guess i could have done that.
Am i doing something wrong?...Am i not even getting the RAW files into lightroom?
Im actually shooting in NEF RAW + JPEG fine. When i upload to my computer, i get two files..the RAW and JPEG. I assumed lightroom automatically chose the RAW file when i imported the entire folder, as it only imports one file each.