B&W conversion

[AprilW]

My 7 year old has this obnoxious habit of making weird faces as soon as I pick up my camera. I have very few decent pics of him! lol I caught a decent one in the backyard, but accidently blew out the sky. When I got it on the computer screen and saw the mostly white background I got the idea to convert it to B&W and put him on a white background. So thats what I did. (I also put a few of his Easter pics on my Flickr if anyone is interested in seeing the faces I usually get.)

Before:


After:

Aiden by April267, on Flickr

1. I used the magnetic Lasso to cut Aiden from the background on the original photo.
2. I created a new document with a white background and moved Aiden onto it.
3. I edited out the swing chain (clone stamp, blur tool, and eraser)
4. Converted the whole image to black and white
5. selected white and grey points to get better colors, then upped the contrast.
6. I upped the brightness just on his eyes (they got really dark when I upped the contrast), added a little dodging to the shine in his eyes.
7. fixed a few things with his skin (scratches and stuff) using the blemish tool and added just a touch of dodging to his bottom lip
8. blurred the edges of his head because it looked fake-ish from the copy/paste.

EXIF

Camera Nikon D3100
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 38 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash No Flash
Orientation Horizontal (normal)

[Physibeth]

Excellent job! I like it a lot!

[-Annalise-]

Great work, looks great in B+W ! His eyelashes are so long! i wish mine were like that

[tal_ninio]

The basic conversion is done well.
His eyes need some more attention. Try to dodge them a little more.

[cmletts]

Really gorgeous photo with the edits you've done.

Couple things...I do notice some blurry areas below his collar and on the right shoulder. Not noticeable at a glance but hard to ignore once I saw it.

I also agree that the eyes could use some work. I'd like to see them "pop" a little more. I'm usually not a fan of overly intense eyes but I think this photo really calls for it.

(Wish I could give you more specific advice on how to make these edits but I'm still a bit new to pp)

Again, really great overall - worth the extra work to take this photo as far as you can in my opinion.

[SusanH1970]

Agreed with the eyes needing a touch of brightening, but not so much they look like alien eyes, lol. I'd also bring up the midtones using curves or levels, it's just a tiny bit muddy.

[AprilW]

OK, I did some more work on the eyes, levels, and the blurred areas... I think I may have overdone the eyes this time

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by AprilW

I think I may have overdone the eyes this time

LOL, yep!

Do you mind if I have a play? No worries if you'd rather I didn't.

[autofocus]

Looking closely at the eyes it almost looks like we're looking at two different photos. In the color version his eyes look a little more sleepy looking, and a little more open in the b/w version. Could be me, but I see it as two different photos???

[AprilW]

Susan- Be my guest, You'll probably have better luck than me I'm brand new to photoshop and am trying to teach myself from books and the internet lol.

Autofocus- I took a series of 5 photos that look almost identical, I meant to upload 826 and accidentally did 825, oops!. I replaced it into the original post . I'll get the hang of all this eventually!