Baby Clark

[julieanne]

Hi everyone!
I'm new to this whole dSLR/Photoshop editing excitement. I've had two whole class meetings of my Photo I class, and just downloaded the trial of Elements yesterday.

This is from my first dozen or so pictures taken on manual mode. The goal was to get decent exposure, even if the rest wasn't so great.

Before:


First I cropped it. Next I adjusted the levels as described in the guided edit part of Elements. After that I did some crazy stuff and got all confused with layers and why it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. (ha) It finally made sense, and I did a gausian blur on the background.

After:


Any thoughts on the image itself or the processing or suggestions or whatever would be appreciated...just remember that I still have no idea what I'm doing!

Nikon D3000
1/100
f4.5
ISO 400

Thanks!
julieanne

[Sobriquet]

Great effort! I like the way you cropped it, the focus on the eyes, the expression you captured, however, the gaussian blur is noticable and looks bad where it meets the subject, try feathering the selection more and also changing the fill and opacity of the blur layer, reducing that might do the trick. I think you took the exposure up a little too much (hot spot developed on his forehead that wasn't in the original) I don't know how you lightened it but maybe use curves to bring it up without creating really light patches. There are lots of people on here who do like that effect but I am from a conventional film competition background and "blown out" (meaning no information in the highlights) is a real issue and prints would be imediately dismissed if they contain those. Raising the exposure on skin tones does have the effect of reducing the visibility of blemishes but this little boy doesn't really need that. Nice portrait and it is heaps of fun learning photoshop, there is a lot to it.

[julieanne]

Thank you for your reply! This is exactly what I was hoping for, because I was able to take your comments and give it another go. The learning process kinda feels like, "Woo! I can blur things and do stuff with color!! Hmm, now what?"

I went back to the image and played around with the curves a little bit. Is there a way to go back and set curves for all the layers at the same time, or is that something that has to be done first? I did a duplicate layer and found a setting I liked, but couldn't figure out how to get it to my other layers (like my blur and his body). I basically had to redo everything from the new layer that had the curve setting that I liked. I couldn't find any numbers or anything to transfer it.

Here's the new images. I reduced the blur opacity to 60%, and feathered the edges. I think it helps the background fade a little more (which is what I wanted) instead of being like "HEY! I'm a background and I'm blurred!!" I darkened it a touch all over.



Thanks again, Sobriquet! As before, any thoughts or ideas for improvement are appreciated.

[CanonFans]

I just love this! Great job!!

[Mishkyah]

Photoshop Elements dosnt have curves! It has colour curves where you can select a 'style' and adjust sliders but its very anoying and isnt really the same a curves. Try getting your hands on an older version of creative suite, CS3 or CS4 would be far more useful than any version of elements!