Wedding pic C&C

erphoto · Oct 17, 2009

I agree with Nicnack. I give my clients all the images I take, unless I have really effed something up. I try different things to get different effects. Obviously, I don't do these things during events that cannot be reproduced. (the kiss, walk down the aisle, etc) and if those don't work I delete them. I do so love b&w. But I can tell when it isn't going to work and I try to work accordingly. I haven't shot 300 weddings, but I'm learning... and if we don't learn, how do we grow.

erphoto · Oct 17, 2009

*if those don't work = the different things to get different effects, not the unreproducible actions shots. Just to clarify.

camz · Oct 17, 2009

I think I got myself in a rut! :lol:

For those who say they can't turn mediocre SOOC into magic using Post Processing should look at this thread Photos from beginer with cameraphone. To me I just so happen do it in black and white(since it's so much simple to fix oppossed to coloured) and explaining to the OP what I did behind the scenes. Almost anything is possible in PP.

schumionbike · Oct 17, 2009

I like the bw conversion done by Camz and I think it look better than the original. BW pictures sometimes does put a difference emphasis on the photo making it either or worst. I don't convert everything into BW because it'll look worst than the color version. But sometimes, I wouldn't like the pictures until I convert it into bw. I do notice that a lot of times, when you mess up a picture, they would look better in black and white.lol.

Buckster · Oct 18, 2009

With the secret service guy growing out of her neck, another one sticking out of her shoulder, the tilted garage roof poking through her head, beer keg sticking out of her arm, the purple plastic cup, the blur, etc., I think this is not really a 'keeper' shot to begin with. Nonetheless, the bride has a nice smile on her happy day, so IF I were to start throwing Photoshop at it in an effort to 'fix' it, I'd get rid of everything but the bride's smile, essentially. The whole background and the plastic cup get replaced in my version of 'saving' this image:

Before (but straightened and cropped):

After:

And if B&W is more to your taste, here's one of those:

flea77 · Oct 18, 2009

Buckster said:
The whole background and the plastic cup get replaced in my version of 'saving' this image:

You know, that is pretty dang good. I would change two things. First, leave the cup, the glass looks too fake. Second, fix that little bright line on the right along the back of her arm.

Even still, I am impressed. Nice work.

Allan

Buckster · Oct 18, 2009

I got a request to share how I reworked this photo and in what program, so here it is:

I worked the photo in Photoshop CS4

1. Using the ruler tool, I straightened the photo using the vertical edge of the garage door, Image>Image Rotation>Arbitrary.

2. I cropped away all but the bride and a bit of space around her that I wanted to keep so she wouldn't be too crowded in the final composition.

3. I created two new layers and filled one with black and the other with white.

4. I copied the bride base layer to a new layer on top of the black and white layers.

5. I put a layer mask on the bride layer and used a soft brush to paint through to reveal the black layer below to get rid of all the background and just leave the bride intact. When it was difficult to make an easy distinction using the black layer, I switched it off and used the white layer. I masked through the purple cup as well.

6. I pulled in a copy of a background I thought would work well for the bridal composition and placed it just below the bride layer with the mask, then sized and positioned it.

7. I blurred the background image with gausian blur to taste, which turned out to be 1.4 pixels. I also reduced the brightness and saturation of the background a bit to shove it further back compositionally, and to help the bride stand out better against it.

8. I feathered the bride layer mask to taste so that it would blend better with the new background.

9. I created a new layer under the bride layer and above the background's adjustment layers, then cloned skin from the bride to build the hand and arm that would hold the glass, using the clone stamp set to Sample All Layers.

10. I created a brightness/contrast adjustment layer for the new hand and arm to darken it, clipping it to the arm layer alone.

11. I brought in a stock photo of a glass, reduced the opacity, then transformed it to size and fit it into place, then took the opacity back up to 100%.

12. I masked off the areas of the glass where the fingers would need to appear on top of it, as well as the rest of the pixels surrounding the glass.

13. With the glass masked, I made a duplicate of it, then set the bottom glass blending mode to Hard Light at 100% opacity, and the top glass blending mode to Multiply at 58% opacity.

14. I created a layer below the bottom glass layer and filled it with a pale yellow, then masked off all but the area I wanted to represent the liquid in the glass, then reduced the opacity of that layer to 27%.

15. I made a new layer at the very top of all the other layers and filled it with black. Then I reduced the opacity to 20%, made a layer mask, and painted a hole in the middle of the mask with a very large, very soft brush to make a vignette effect. I then re-adjusted the opacity to taste, ending up at 27%.

16. Using Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E (on Windows) I jumped a copy of everything onto one layer at the top of the stack.

17. I sharpened the new layer using Smart Sharpen using Amount 100%, Radius 0.3 pixels, Remove Lens Blur, More Accurate checked.

18. Save for web and upload.

Nicnack · Oct 18, 2009

WOW... thats even better than I would have been able to do.

BTW nice write up!

Buckster · Oct 18, 2009

Nicnack said:
WOW... thats even better than I would have been able to do.

BTW nice write up!

Thank you kindly!

Chuck · Oct 18, 2009

Buckster -

I certainly don't have your PS skills. So here's what I was able to do in PSE while watching Da Bears.

Morganwilliam · Nov 3, 2009

The picture is looking very beautiful and couple are looking very gorgeous.........

Goontz · Nov 3, 2009

Morganwilliam said:
The picture is looking very beautiful and couple are looking very gorgeous.........

Thank you for your valuable spam and bumping of an old thread!

PS. No, we are not going to get curious and view the links in your signature!

Inst!nct · Nov 3, 2009

Goontz said:
Morganwilliam said:

The picture is looking very beautiful and couple are looking very gorgeous.........

Click to expand...

Thank you for your valuable spam and bumping of an old thread!

PS. No, we are not going to get curious and view the links in your signature!