Still learning photoshop technique

[Kreapen]

Hey guys,

Still trying to get some more ideas on what Im failing at with my photoshop technique besides practice..

Spend about an hour on this image but something doesn't look right on it to me.



I know i need to work on the way i make the eyes sit but their is something more than that i thinks...

any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Jay

[Murray Foote]

Hi Jay

Two things appear to me. One is that I think the background to the left, especially to the bottom left is a little too close to the colour and tonality of the hair (also at bottom left). Mainly it needs to be darker, say a stop darker. That would help the eye stop falling out the bottom left corner and focus on the face. You can do that in Photoshop but it would be very difficult to preserve hair details. If it's a repeatable studio shot with a readily available model, maybe try again and get a shadow to fall on that part of the background that doesn't fall on the model's face.

The second aspect is that I think it's cropped too closely at the bottom. There needs to be a bit more room between the end of the chin and the frame. If you're not going to reshoot and there is no more image you could try expanding it by about four smidgeons and cloning around though that will be a lot of work because there's a lot of detail down there to make sense of.

Regards,
Murray

[Matt. K]

Her skin colour is way out of whack and does not look natural. Otherwise a very good image.

[Big V]

First of nice shot and well lit. I find myself drawn to her left eye for some reason and I am not sure why. It might be because the nose looks just a tad too smooth or it could be that the lower left hand side of the pic is lighter than the top right hand side - dunno. It is very close and I get what you mean, sorry if I could not provide a more definitative answer

[gstark]

The second aspect is that I think it's cropped too closely at the bottom. There needs to be a bit more room between the end of the chin and the frame.

Good call, Murray. Jay, look at the space around the top of the head. Probably something similar at the bottom of this image is what's needed.

I find myself drawn to her left eye for some reason and I am not sure why. I

Tony, her left eye, or the eye to the left of the image, as we are viewing it? What I think I'm seeing is that her left eye is pretty much dead centre in this image, and perhaps ever so slightly OOF; her right eye seems to me to be more sharply in focus, and her nose is a bit soft. And slightly OOF too.

I'm wondering if it's the dead centre location of this eye that is causing the problem?

[ozimax]

Jay, the first thing I noticed was the bloodshot eye. (My eyes suffer from "perma-shot" and no, I don't drink.) These can be fixed. I do also concur with the crop comments. A tad more space would be better.

Cheers,

Ozi.

[Kreapen]

Would love to be able to readjust the crop but unfortunatly that is the image un-cropped.

was taken with a 50mm 1.8 canon and just happened to fill the whole frame.

[Murray Foote]

As I suggested, if you're prepared to spend the time you could do that in Photoshop.

[ATJ]

Now you have an excuse to go take some more photos of her.

While Photoshop technique is all well and good, getting the shot as close as possible to your goal at time of capture goes a long way.

[Kreapen]

Her skin colour is way out of whack and does not look natural. Otherwise a very good image.

The skin colour actually hasnt been altered..

I kept the saturation on her face untouched. may possible have just been the natural light that altered it :S

Not really sure

I better post to original as well...

Original


Same image that is posted above

[Murray Foote]

I thought skin colour was fine.

However, this raises questions of profiling of monitors. You will only see accurate colours on your monitor if you calibrate and profile it using a colorimeter such as the Eye-One Display 2 (there may still be a special on them at Image Science in Melbourne for $310).

There might have been another potential issue of colour gamut because the sRBG space for web display is much narrower than what the camera captures - but in this case it's probably all inside sRGB anyway.

Regards,
Murray