Mirror shots

[ocnsprt]

SO this is a reflection shot of a friend from dinner the other night, and we were playing around bc she kept staring at herself in the mirror in my living room, and so I said if she liked it so much we should take a pic in it, anyways it have dirty and smudged and I dont own windex so we made due, her is the result of my quick snap..
before




and after






I started out cropping and creating a second layer, setting it to screen and selecting the brush tool on clear and removing the layer from the picture left frame so it wasnt brighter than her. then merged layers, selected another layer and using the magnetic lasso selected her eyes and applied an unsharp mask, then flattened and selected another layer and used the gaussian blur, dust/scratches, and add noise filters, then selected the brush set to clear and removed the layer effects from the areas of the shot that werent skin, then adjust the laer opacity to look natural, and finally flattened and stamped with watermark.... hope you all enjoy
only problem I found was the fingerprints on the mirror (curtousy of my son) were more visible in the edited version

[constructivecriticism]

Great post-production work, as I don't notice any of the smudges and fingerprints you mentioned. A softened flash would have done wonders on the face and neck, for which I'd recommend you duplicate the layer, apply a moderate Gaussian blur, mask it all off, and then with a white brush with low opacity work around the edge of the shadow.

Again, great shot, and lovely eyes, I must add.

[ocnsprt]

Originally Posted by constructivecriticism

Great post-production work, as I don't notice any of the smudges and fingerprints you mentioned. A softened flash would have done wonders on the face and neck, for which I'd recommend you duplicate the layer, apply a moderate Gaussian blur, mask it all off, and then with a white brush with low opacity work around the edge of the shadow.

Again, great shot, and lovely eyes, I must add.

I havent figured out how to mask it off as you say, I have watched alot of tutorials that talk about it and I know how to use it with the brush to paint the mask layer on but Im not sure how to set as a mask...advice??

[constructivecriticism]

Originally Posted by ocnsprt

I havent figured out how to mask it off as you say, I have watched alot of tutorials that talk about it and I know how to use it with the brush to paint the mask layer on but Im not sure how to set as a mask...advice??

Hit the mask button while you have the blurred layer selected. Once you have the white box to the side of the blurred layer selected (four black corners highlight it), hit 'd' on your keyboard (which will reset your colors to a black foreground and a white background). With the mask of that layer selected, hit 'ctrl+backspace' (which should fill in the entirety of the mask layer. At this point, you should notice that the blurriness goes away, much as if you turned the layer off.
Now, select a brush of the appropriate size with a decreased opacity and, on the mask of the blurred layer, start going along the edge of the harsh shadows.

Maybe a quick go-over with the dodge tool set on the Shadow range will do some good, as well. Here's my 2 minute results. Hope you don't mind.

Best of luck

[ocnsprt]

Originally Posted by constructivecriticism

Hit the mask button while you have the blurred layer selected. Once you have the white box to the side of the blurred layer selected (four black corners highlight it), hit 'd' on your keyboard (which will reset your colors to a black foreground and a white background). With the mask of that layer selected, hit 'ctrl+backspace' (which should fill in the entirety of the mask layer. At this point, you should notice that the blurriness goes away, much as if you turned the layer off.
Now, select a brush of the appropriate size with a decreased opacity and, on the mask of the blurred layer, start going along the edge of the harsh shadows.

Maybe a quick go-over with the dodge tool set on the Shadow range will do some good, as well. Here's my 2 minute results. Hope you don't mind.

Best of luck

Awsome thanks so much for the breakdown, Im gonna go try it now (:

[areeffbee]

Beautifully done. Her eyes are great in this, & nice expression. You so can't tell it's shot in a mirror, tho.