Recent Portraits - C&C Please

emogirl · Dec 12, 2007

beautiful family....nice comp on the first shot, they will surely be happy with that..

2nd shot...overexposed, hot spots on her cheeks might be cloned out and the shadow is distracting...

3rd & 4th are lacking in contrast and appear a bit soft to me...however, they can both be saved somewhat ....you could disguise the softness with a gaussian blur, sharpen the eyes and add contrast

also the baby is to close to the backdrop...if he were further away, a shallow dof would naturally blur it and the wrinkles wouldnt be an issue. you could try do a blur on the background only

last shot is very cute! get rid of the dirt on her elbow and slightly lighten the iris of her yes and sharpen and the family will be wowed! sure wish they hadnt put that bow in her hair, it de - emphasizes her face, but that isnt your fault!

dostagamom · Dec 12, 2007

All of your comments are so helpful...thank you so much.
Emogirl...I am new at Photoshop (I actually have Elements)...could you tell me how to lighten the iris and add constrast...I have tried it by going to the "dial" and moving it around, but that does not seem to get the effect that I think yall are talking about...thanks

jstuedle · Dec 12, 2007

I like #1 a lot except for dad's squinting eyes. Composition is good, and the kids look great. (getting 3 kids to smile AND look at a camera at the same time is usually the hard part)

emogirl · Dec 13, 2007

andrea....to lighten and add contrast to the eyes, you can do it one of two ways. Sometimes you only need to do one thing, something you need both.

the colour of her eyes would really come out if lightened a bit. select the 'dodge' tool and a tiny brush and set it about 10-15% and go over the iris once or twice just to lighten that area. that shoudl do it.

other way to go is to select the whole eye, with the magic wand or lasso tool. then use levels or curves to create contrast. i find that many photographers go over board on this step and the eyes, though beautiful, can become unnaturally bright/contrasty/sparkly. so just practice and see what works.

I find most of the time that a little kiss of lightness with the dodge tool brings out the detail in their eye without making it phony looking.

do becareful when you are lightening it though...too much lightening and you will drop out the contrst and make things dull and lifeless...just a little kiss of lightness will do it! practice!

you can also whiten the whites of the eyes too with the dodge method...again set it very low and dont go crazy...people soooo easily over whiten! for the most part, you dont need to whiten children's eyes.

oh, and i forgot, its also beneficial to do this work on a duplicate layer....that way you can adjust the opacity after the fact and get very natural results!

if you need more clarification, pm me