Fashion Photo Before/After

[Mattj]

I was working with a new model this weekend, and wanted to work on my fashion photo post production techniques; soften skin, improve highlights, color correction, liquify techniques. Take a look at the before and after photos and let me know what you think.

Before


After



Are there any areas that you would improve?

[Murtasma]

I would have had her sit more in the middle of the stairs and down a few steps. I would have used a longer lens if possible, the pose looks good but the kissing motion she is doing with her lips is pretty cliché I would have done with out this. After the change in perspective from moving her lower on the stairs so her head does not go over the last stair and the compression of the image when using a longer focal length. I would have also done a tighter crop to remove the background and railing since they distract from the model once these few things were modified. That's just my personal take on what I would have done with the location.

As for the post processing it looks better then the original but it's hard to comment here the images are pretty small, she doesn't fill much of the frame so a larger version is really needed here to properly see the edits that were done.

[sarahgirl777]

I agree with the above poster, I'd need to see a closer up shot to really tell. From far away you don't really see many of the "flaws" in a face anyways.

[FoG]

ok witout sounduing rude this is almost like a REALLY hard spot the difference without a close up it is sooo hadr to psot Ilike the shot overall but maybe a crop to remove some of the busyness from the top opf it ? as for the other posters I do agree a nice shot would be same pose but tighter focus she is a beautiful model with nice curvees would be nicely set off against the horizontal steps in a tight shot but this is great non the less ....

Ignore my non pro ideas I just thought oooooh I would do that but then I would probably leave the lens cap on too

[Mattj]

Ok I cropped the photos and uploaded larger files to my server. Take a look at the before and after

Before Image
After Image

[Murtasma]

I think the liquidy tool on the face was done vert well, the image however has a lot of noise in it. What was your EXIF for these shots? She also appears to be pretty soft in the image but that could depend on several things. Perhaps with the EXIF data we can help more.

[Mattj]

You are right I had a lot of noise going on. I had just come out of a dark tunnel, had no flash or reflectors so had to kick up the iso, and forgot to drop it back down when we came out into the sun.

Here are the details

Exposure Mode: Manual
Focal Length 60.0mm
Lens EF28-90mm f/4-5.6
Flash: none
F 5.0
Exposure 1/1000
ISO 640
Auto WB, but tweaked in PP

[Murtasma]

The ISO is probably what killed this shot the most 1/1000th of a second is fast, you could have safely used ISO 200 and stop your lens down another stop or two. At the focal length you were at and that lens ratings it's probably a little soft at F5.6 at that focal length.

I've messed shots up with the ISO before like this it's often frustrating that's why I pay more attention to my shutter speed now. If the shutter is too fast that's usually a sign to me that I forgot to reduce my ISO from moving from a Dark to Lighter area.

[Mattj]

Yeah I was on a time crunch and this shoot was really setup to teach a friend how to use his camera. Would have loved to been able to scout out all the locations and position, setup with the proper equipment, and get all my settings worked out. Do you think 1/1000 is to fast for fashion shoots?

[Murtasma]

It depends if they are going down a runway it would be good to have a faster shutter speed but 1/1000th of a second is still probably over kill. Usually at runway shows the lighting is very poor so you will need to use a flash which will limit you to your flash sync speed probably around 200th to 250th of a second depending on your camera. You can you faster shutter speeds with your flash if it supports high sync speeds but you loose a lot of output from your flash when doing this. I think 200th - 250th of a second should be good enough to freeze motion in most situations.

For your particular shoot something around 100th of a second would work pretty well and should freeze any small movements the model may make, you can probably get away with an even slower shutter speed.

Each situation will be different if they are posed shots generally you don't need shutter speeds that fast. I would still however keep your shutter speed faster then the focal length you are shooting at to reduce camera shake. If you need to freeze the action of a model such as jumping in the air the shutter speed will need to be faster thus limiting you to what aperture you can use depending on the light you have to work with.