Kerry On Holiday

OK I thought I would try some Nightime Portrait Photos when we were away,
Ime sure most of you know portraiture is something Ime rubbish at but I was looking for opinions on these.
Ive desaturated them both because 1 I thought they looked nicer and 2 despite useing the flash in the dark her face was still very red!

C+C Appreciated

I think you should upload the original colour one.
That way some of us can show you different examples of desaturation modes.
Because....I think the one used by you, isn't the best one. They both have a muddy, non sparkling low contrast appearance.

About the girls pose: I think she could be a bit more relaxed.
Now she is holding on very tight, as if she is afraid to fall of......

Martin.

edit: typo

Ok Martin Here is the original color photo's.
I havent editied these I have just pulled theme straight off the RAW.
I just used the desaturation in PS i didnt know there was different ones

As for the pose I dont know lol

Thanks Martin.

Ok, I will have a go with it, later this day.

Martin.

Thanks Martin. As usual you are a star

OK Andy,
This is what I have done to them.
I opened them in L.R. and used auto exposure. Than added some contrast by using a slight S curve in levels. Fore the mono conversion I used grey scale in the Colour tab. This gives you the best instrument to work on individual colours. (This tool is also found in ACR for PS CS 3 and higher.
Finally I split toned the images by cooling down the shadows and warming up the highlights. Oh.......and I took some creative liberty to crop and clone out some distracting elements.
Note: There are some compression artefacts caused by importing and exporting a very small file.




and




Oh...BTW, your Copyright is fully protected and mentioned on my website,
as done to all the edits I do for others to show the examples here.
Please look here.

Martin.

To be honest (and not insulting here)but i think that is a terrible edit.

May i have a go as i am confident i can make it look much better than the original?

Matt

Thanks Martin, And Yes Matt of course it is ok. Ime open to all suggestions!

No worries, it takes a bit more to insult me. I'm confident you will do a much better job at it. I know I don't know diddly **** about model photography and the lighting involved. I was only showing an other way in which the B&W conversion could be achieved. Compared to the muddy and lifeless posted versions by the OP.
So...by all means, show us how it's done.

Hi,

Just done the first one. Did a slight curves adjustment, used the magic wand to isolate the girl, increased exposure by 0.6 and then sharpened the lot by 50%.

Does suffer from slight fuzziness due to the compression of the jpeg and if was a raw file you wouldnt see the black line around her. (was there anyway just shows up more due to upping the exposure slightly)

If i had the original it would be alot better.




Matt

Matt,
Dont get me wrong but I think this version of the image is definitely bad. You just have to look at the tone of the subject's skin particularly her face as the profile has been captured and it just shows those really bad patches, only difference is in the coloured image is reddish and in yours its darkened. Not a nice image at all and the black line around her left leg really is out of control.

Martin's version looks much more controlled and nicer to the eye. Of course this considering the fact that the original one is not exactly a very high quality anyway but a good transformation still under the circumstances.

Just my personal humble opinion anyway so feel free to repudiate it

Well, lets not turn this into a: Mine is bigger than yours kind of thing.
Important is the OP knows there are other ways to do a mono conversion.
Matt obviously knew he could do a better job. Which is fine by me.
Seasoning to taste, Right??

Martin.

Thanks Both. Well theres certainly 3 very different ways of doing the same thing.
IMO I think martin has the skin tones beter but I do prefer Matt's Colors overall.

Oh well like Martin has said seasoning to taste!

Thanks for all your input guys. I think ile try to stick more to wildlife and landscape though LOL

Numerous ways to do it and if we had the original raw to play with it the blemishes on the skin wouldnt be there. its only there due to compression.

Matt