Help editing bridal photo, please

Marlene · Aug 25, 2009

Good morning all!
I took this photo of my nephew's bride this weekend. I rented a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. I was really excited about this lens, but a little disappointed in my results. I'm glad I decided to try it out before buying it.
Anyway, this is the photo I'd like to work on. I have Photoshop elements 6, and have downloaded the trial of Alienskin Bokeh. I'd like to do something about that sharp shadow outlining her, blur the background and do a vignette. I've been staring at the computer now for three days working on this, but no acceptable results yet. Can anyone help me?
Thanks so much!
Marlene

SrBiscuit · Aug 25, 2009

welcome to the forum.

it will be requested that you post a higher res version for people to work on.

ive got a full plate today otherwise i'd try to help you out.

i look forward to seeing results though!

Marlene · Aug 25, 2009

Hmmm...
Maybe this will work better,,,I'm not usually such an idiot (LOL)

mariusz · Aug 25, 2009

you will need to punch up the curves or level its a little to dark.

Big Mike · Aug 25, 2009

That's bigger, but to really give us something to play with, bigger would be better. If not full size, then at least 1000 pixels on the long side.

I'm sure you've figured it out by now, but it's better to 'fix' these things before they happen.
The side shadow is a result of your flash being to the left of your camera when turned to portrait orientation. You could avoid this by using a flash bracket, which keeps the flash above the camera even when rotated. Or you could have bounced the flash off of some walls or the ceiling. You could also have had her move away from the wall etc.

It also looks like you were trying to captuer here looking out a window, in which case you could probably have turned off the flash and use only natural light, even if it meant turning up your ISO.

Marlene · Aug 25, 2009

"I'm sure you've figured it out by now, but it's better to 'fix' these things before they happen."

Yes, first lesson learned for this experiment. Thanks so much for the tips. I need a lot practice.
I replaced the first photo with a larger one, so I wouldn't clog everything up with so many pics.
Thanks again!
Marlene

o hey tyler · Aug 25, 2009

This is what I got with about 30 seconds of editing while working. Blurred everything a smidge except for her face, and brought up the saturation a little bit to make it more vibrant. I guess it's all kind of personal taste.

I also shooped out the wall plugs.

o_O · Aug 25, 2009

My suggestion is to remove the distracting elements as best you can. Here a rough attempt. Obviously you'd take more time on the edges/transitions then I would.

The face it the focus of the portrait so any attempt to remove the shadow is going to show unless you spend a really long time on it. So I went the other direction. I sampled the color of the shadow in front of her face then on a new layer, filled the right wall. I added a layer mask and gradient filled so the natural shadows showed through on the right hand side. Then I sampled the wall on the left and filled the area on a new layer. I use chose a color darker from the pallet and gradient (color to transparent) filled another new layer to create a naturalish light fall off. I had to erase some of the layer around the dress, which is kind of tricky to get right. I didn't really try to hard so you'll see the transitions. You'd want to get those a little neater. Finally cropped a little to reduce the distractions.