beginner portrait editing

[aaimanck]

hi... i m beginner photography lover. I edited this picture using Portrait Professional and playing with layers in Adobe Photoshop.

[elkidogz]

This isn't bad, I'm a noob too at portraits, I'd just make sure that when you do photoshop, you don't mess with the color of the skin of the subject, I think if you check out the news there was recently a big stink about doing just that.

[deadgirlreading]

Can you tell me what steps you took to do this?
You've really brought out her eyes.

[aaimanck]

thank you both of you on your comment...

1. i just follow Portrait Professional suggestion and do nothing for this picture

2. in Photoshop, i duplicated this picture and play with brightness and contras, fill and opacity. it just try and error steps till i got this final picture...

[gturner]

I am not sure what other software you have, but it would help if you could keep the windows dull. In lightroom there is an exposure brush that would help.
At the moment the bright windows are detracting from her face.
(a little less tilt for me, but that is a personal thing)

[highlydope]

Originally Posted by gturner

I am not sure what other software you have, but it would help if you could keep the windows dull. In lightroom there is an exposure brush that would help.
At the moment the bright windows are detracting from her face.
(a little less tilt for me, but that is a personal thing)

Alternatively in Photoshop you can mask out the background on an adjustment layer with a "hide everything" layer mask and just sart painting that adjustment, so the correction is dynamic and can be reverted by the "X" key.

Or, adjust curves to bring out shadows then step back one in history and "paint" with history brush as much as you like. Repeat for hilights.

[Irene Sofia]

My opinion is that looks kind of orange, some part of her face look very good like the eyes but some of them look too saturated I don't know but the great thing about ps is that you can try lot's of stuff
Check out some tutorials, that might help you in other oportunity, keep playing with your photos and don't be afraid to try other techniques, look at this pages pick something, go have fun and show it to us later
Digital Photography Techniques
Photo Effects | Page 4

look my work too [MINI MAKEOVER] girl photo shoot B/W

[Izzy]

I like the attempt. As a portrait photographer I would say that your post production correction went too far. It appears that the sheen on the clothing as well as her face have lost some of their color. Look closely at the shiny parts of her dress pre-production and you will see these are very subtle but necessary highlights. Post production portrait work is a very delicate process to get them spot on.

The process I would have used - based on your tools available

1. Crop image to get rid of the white distraction in the lower left hand corner. If you are ditching less than 100 pixels on one side then resize the image to meet the original when done.

2. Adjust the exposure per the levels dialogue in Photoshop. It is important to always do your exposure adjustment first rather than you retouch process.

3. Adjust saturation while paying close attention to the details in the highlights and skin tone to make sure to preserve their detail and luminosity.

4. Once you have an adjusted image that is acceptable aside from the need for blemish removal, save it and open it in Portrait Pro and follow the dialogue per the software.

5. At this point I would decide if a slight soft focus is called for. If it were; reopen in Photoshop and make a duplicate layer and apply radial blur at 40 pixels ( I call this my wedding soft focus) and then reduce layer opacity to about 10% maybe less. Follow up with a medium diffused eraser brush (set brush feather to suit needs). Then erase the areas of the adjustment layer to remove the soft focus from her eyes and so on. Go a little at a time and keep rechecking your work. I toggle the layer back and forth to higher opacity values to help me gauge exactly what has been removed from the focus layer. Some would use a colored mask here but I am used to not doing so.

Portraits are delicate work. To me the best portraits are the ones that stay true to their colors and lighting (IE skin tones and highlights). In most instances the retouch should be a slight change from the original not a dramatic over powering of any one element unless that is what you are looking for in particular.

I hope this was of some help to you

Keep shooting

[Photologyst]

Pretty woman.

I was just going to post the same work sequence that Izzy posted. S/he saved me some time.

Start with color adjustments first.

[wannabephotographer]

You can make this better by processing the background separately.