"In his cups" -Help me please

cruise · Jul 17, 2007

Hi, it has been a while since I have posted.... as life has been busy.
Anyway I took a few photos recently of ricky aged just 1 week in a large cup I bought Recently.The photo was on white seamless with clear plexi-glass on the floor.
Please let me know what you think and how I can make this shot better, and also please feel free to tweak the image and post your results along.
I just cannot seem to get the image to pop enough.

Regards;

notelliot · Jul 17, 2007

i think it's good as is. don't think you'll be able to get it to 'pop' any more. but i would change the watermark, it looks like a date stamp

crownlaurel · Jul 17, 2007

To me it seems a little too white. I am no expert by any measure, but I tried a couple of things to see if you liked them. I'm using a 30 day trial of Photoshop CS3.

The first one, I just went to adjustments, then shadows/highlights and put shadows to 0 and lowered highlights to 5% (it actually looks good up to 10% but I wanted to be conservative here). If you lower the highlights like this, the blanket no longer blends in with the background.

And just for fun, I tried two lighting effects (filters, render, lighting effects...)

2 o'clock spotlight (type spotlight, intensity 17, focus -67, Material -58 on the plastic side, exposure 0, and ambience 20)

Flashlight (type omni, intensity 28, gloss matte -100, material plastic -100, exposure 0, ambience -7...I centered the effect on the blanket to the right of baby's chin)

EnterUserName · Jul 17, 2007

Mine may not be as good as the others but thought I would give it a try

WDodd · Jul 17, 2007

The original is good IMO, I also like crownlaurel's third edit. I would try darken just the background and not anything else though.

|)\/8 · Jul 17, 2007

I don't think the original is too bad, but I played with it anyway. Brightened the colors a little bit +15 on saturation on the cup only. Sharpened a little bit, 50% radius 1.0 pixels. Added some vignetting. All was done in CS3. You may also want to try cropping. I am sure there is a lot that can be done with the photo, would just need time.

gabriel333 · Jul 18, 2007

Hi. I thought I'd give this a shot.

I did a few things...
- evened up the skintone around the mouth
- softened out the shadows around the sides of the head
- lightened up the shadows of the ear, mouth, nose, neck (I felt they were too dark)
- color-corrected the skintone for a more 'rosy' appearance
- added color to the arm and shoulder area
- subtle dogding (lightening) of the facial area to make it 'pop' more.

- saturated the color of the cup and adjusted levels to appear more 3d. I felt taht the colorful cup could draw the eye into the pic.
- used levels and curves to brighten up the background and the sheet to give it a 'glowy' appearance.

lkavaney · Jul 18, 2007

the love the one before last edit! and how cool is that cup?! cute baby too :sexywink:

LaFoto · Jul 18, 2007

I must admit I like the original one still best of all.
I feel it need not "pop" that much, for this is the photo of an infant which should be soft. Maybe - yes, well, make the blanket stand out from the background, as done in crownlaurel's first edition ... but no more.

What a funny cup this is!
And who held this baby's head???

cruise · Jul 19, 2007

I Mean this is truly awesome
Thanx all u ppl.the changes and even the effects look supercool.
All the advice are really Helpful...i'll surely work upon it but all i want to say right now to all u ppl is "Thanx from the bottom of my heart"