Playing in the grass

[ocnsprt]

Before.



After.

So I am fairly new to photography and have been enjoying this sites critique forums, but have decided to try this out and see what people think of my pp, I am having fun learning to use photoshop elements but have alot more to learn, so feel free to critique if youd like, also if something about my pp looks off, feel freee to edit and repost. Anyway this shot is of a friend in the grass by her house. It was very dark laying in the tall grass, so to start i created a new background layer, and set it to screen, then using the brush tool (and if anyone knows how to do this diff, please inform me) I set it to clear 100% and went over the sky and grass, so that only she was lightened. then flattened layers. Then I made another layer, selected dust/scratch filter and set at 3, selected gausian blur and set at 2.5. then select add noise at 1, with it set to uniform and monochromatic. (this is for her skin texture) then i select the brush tool again and clear the grass, sky, clothing, eyes and lips and edges of nose and hair, so that in the layers palet only her skin is effected by the changes. (for this use a soft round brush, whch you can select in the brush menu at the top of the window) then flattened again. Next I used the brush tool again to color burn the sky and grass set at 20% opacity, then with the same tool set to hue, added blue and purple set on 20% opacity to the edges of the clouds. then created new layer and set the hue to red, brused over her lips with the brush opacity set to 50%, then set layer opacity to 30%. flattened again. finally zoomed in really really close ( : and using the brush tool set to darken at 30% with the background and foreground reset to default (which you can do by pressing the d button) i set the px to 2 and added length to her eyelashes. Finally i filled in the whole in her shirt with the brush tool. And thats it.... all feedback welcome....


P.S. I like the light on her face, but does it look blown out to anyone????

[tjlmpc]

I think that your edits are beautiful! Very vibrant and yet not overdone. The light on her face is perfect. Good job!

[BrentHelm]

Very nice edits. I was just thinking... Why dont mine look like that lol.. Great Work

[Wooglah]

I don't know, I like the first one (original) more (better?)...
Not that anything is wrong with edit, I'm just saying...

[tingeliM]

I love what you did! Subtle but still quite a change.

[stitchbug]

Originally Posted by Wooglah

I don't know, I like the first one (original) more (better?)...
Not that anything is wrong with edit, I'm just saying...

me too, i like the lighter grass. but i like the sky in the second one better!
that said, they both look great!

[jul]

I also like the light grass. I really like this picture. Cant wait for green grass again.

[Steve@C4]

Great Edit.

Also noticed the work you did on her blouse. Very, very well done. One would never know had they not seen the original...

[ocnsprt]

Thanks so much everyone for your input, I am glad to get back so much positive feedback on this shot, it has ended up being one of my favorites now of the series. Yes I did cover up the cleavage, glad you noticed and that it looked natural enough that it wasnt noticable (:

[Xavarion]

I think it looks great, the angle is really nice and the sky is beautiful.

I hadnt noticed the covering up of the cleavage but now that I do, I noticed that quite a bit of the detail in the shirt has been lost?

I also prefered the green grass but the sky of the edited.