First Ever Attempt at Post Production

[morrison.ashley84]

This is my first ever attempt at all of this... My first post. I am new at all this. I do not have PS yet so I am using Photoscape.... Need some feedback!!! =)

I used a deepening feature, resizing the picture and a fake-tilt shift in deep mode with a blur to get all of the effects.

[Cathrine]

which one was the post production???

[BigFuzzy]

Hi Ashley,

First, you should read the forum rules about what info to post with the photo (the exif data) so that we can better help you with more detailed analysis of the image/settings to see how to help you most.

As for the photo... first, I think you started off with a pretty tight crop of the original because I can see pixelation on the arms and in general. Be careful when cropping that you don't come in too close.

Part of the issue is that the photo in general is not sharp/in focus. I assume it's because the shutter speed was pretty low so, to me, that's hurtful to the image from the go.

I see the value in this image and can imagine it means a lot to you (your child, or family?). However, I'm not sure the post-processing (PP) helped much.
I do like that the PP added contrast to the image, it was needed. I also like the colors more in the PP.
What I don't like is that what was already a soft image (ie out of focus), became more so due to the post processing especially with the fake DoF thing. And the post processing made the eyes much darker, which I didn't like and created those "hot spots" on her forehead and temple. That's bad because typically the eye is drawn to the brightest part of an image and for me that was the case here.

I honestly thing that I would have simply sharpened the image some, boosted the contrasts and maybe boosted (ever so slightly, don't over do it) the saturation/vibrance to give a little punch to the image.

Don't worry, as a beginner we always want to do a lot of post processing to play with the image and sometimes forget that subtlety is better.
Welcome to DPS by the way.. I hope we can help!

Al

[dougmiranda]

Nice job!!
Like to see this, give some tips to do this work.

[morrison.ashley84]

Thanks for all of the info!! This is literally the first few days I have ever played with any post production... I didn't take this particular shot and yes it is one of my kids... I have a few more that I've played with... I am doing a TON of research so that is helping and I will definately remember to go a few steps under what I think is finished...

Thanks for the warm welcome!!!