PS suggestions for these two.

Freedbaby

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My son loves to sit on the ledge but by the time I get the camera ready.....nevermind you know the drill. I have been trying a while to get these.

so, its a tough shot for me because of the direction the house faces; I metered the best I could. In this case you can only have one correct....I chose to be somewhere inbetween. I want to turn these two into black and whites in Photoshop Elements. Can anyone A)critique the photos and B)give me a semi step by step way to turn them into B & W and work on the highlights a bit.....or for that matter any other help these could use.

Here they are:

oh yeah, sorry about the wet dog nose streaks...with two dogs clean windows are impossible.

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Freedbaby
 
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I actually like the shots and the general idea... I've always been attracted to pics of kids looking out the window for some reason, and the dramatic lighting is often very cool if you can pull it off (which I think you did very nicely).

Some things that I think would make the shot better...
  • Are those windows dirty? If so, cleaning them up would be nice- almost looks like dirt outside and fingerprints inside (the latter isn't shocking considering he has his hand in his mouth on shot 2) :lol: Anyway, the "dirt" or appearance of same is kind of distracting.
  • I really dislike diapers on kids in shots, and particularly disposable ones with pictures of random stuff all over them. This may just be a me thing (I'm a guy, I have two kids and one still in diapers, etc.) but I really don't like seeing kids diapers.
Other than that, however... again, neat. :thumbup:
 
I like the shots. The first works much better. The second one has so much detail lost in the shadows (face). You can try and recover some of that with the shadow/highlight tool.

As far as BW conversion. In elements there is not a black and white tool or a channel mixer that I remember, so you will need to just desaturate the photo. I would create a new layer first, then desaturate it. Create another new layer and then using the the Brightness/Contrast tool consider brighting it up just a bit. Then again on a new layer use the B/C tool to boost the contrast. My personal taste for BW is alot of contrast so I would push it quite a bit, but just do it to taste.

Anyway pretty simple way to do BW conversion. You do not have to create the new layer between each step, but if you are going to do much experimenting it makes it a lot easier and you always have a reference of where you are at compared to where you are going.
 
i think the first photo could have been really nice if it was taken from the outside, looking in

but its too late for that i guess D:
 
Nice pics.... The loss of detail can be helped with the use of "Fill in flash". A small burst of flash about 2 stops less than the ambient light. Point it at the ceiling (If it is a white ceiling) in order to soften it. It will then just fill in some of the shadow detail.
 
Nice pics.... The loss of detail can be helped with the use of "Fill in flash". A small burst of flash about 2 stops less than the ambient light. Point it at the ceiling (If it is a white ceiling) in order to soften it. It will then just fill in some of the shadow detail.

100% correct....didnt have the flash attached and if I had stopped to grab it I would have missed the shots.

A) How do I go about cleaning up the windows in PS?

B) There actually is a B&W conversion tool but I have heard a lot of people who have these fancy ways that come out looking more like film and was interested to see if it would work for these.

C) with regards to bringing the highlights out in the face, should I do it in a separate layer or not?
 

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