Sister's wedding

[drr0b]

Hi I wanted to make a dramatic B/W photo from one of my sister's wedding photos. I would welcome suggestions for improvements, or maybe an easier way to achieve the same effect

Before


After


I used Photoshop Elements 7, first cropping the photo, then adding a gradient map adjustment layer with a restricted compressed colour range... I suspect that there's another way of doing this though!

I then lightened parts of the bottom layer with the dodge brush. So suggestions for more artful dodging welcome too

[harrypalmer044]

Hi there and "Welcome" to a super site and a great community. I really hope you enjoy your time here and just get stuck in Now with regards to your sister's image, I think you made hard work for yourself with the original image your working from. You have too many things going off in it and this has meant you needed to either crop or remove people and distractions to focus on your main subjects. I think going down the black & white road was a cool idea but you have removed an awful lot of detail and left your image really dark. I took the liberty of having a 5 minute play to see what I could do with your image and I hope you like the result. I would stick with the b&w effect but look at removing the man in the front of the image and the postman at the back then crop it and give yourself a little more room to play with.
Anyway I look forward to seeing what you come up with next, enjoy your time here.
Take Care.
David

[JeffSmith]

Nice edit Harry, perhaps you could share your wisdom :-)

[drr0b]

Thanks Harry, that's a different feel to what I had in mind, but looks great! You've done a really good job in getting the pesky photographer out of the shot; how did you do that so quickly?

[ihsankhairir]

Clone stamping is the best way to remove an unwanted element in a photograph. Nice work, David.

[harrypalmer044]

Originally Posted by ihsankhairir

Clone stamping is the best way to remove an unwanted element in a photograph. Nice work, David.

Hi all,
I know that my version is not the type of effect you were after but it was just an example to give you an idea of what you can do if you just look at the original and think about how you want to achieve your result. I did that in about 10 minutes with Elements 6 so you should have no trouble doing the same. I took the original image and used it as the template, I used different sizes of "Clone Stamp" to remove the man at the front and also the postman at the back, I then cleaned up and smoothed out the edges of where I had been working and converted it to a black and white image. With a little adjustment to the contrast and focus I ended up with what you see, like I said it took 10 minutes.
Like I said I think you made your job harder using the image you did, if you had another image without so much going on it would make your task so much easier. I look forward to seeing what you decide on. Thank you for letting me have a play.
David.

[drr0b]

Hi,

Being a scientist, it's very hard for me to alter what was there, but I must suffer for my art :P!

I would have loved an easier job, but that was the only photo I have with the trainy bit like that. Here is my second go, taking account of your composition. I think it's much better, thanks! I used a section of a giant circular brush to lighten the left hand side, and a part of a giant square brush for the right.


Any more suggestions to improve it further are very welcome!

[harrypalmer044]

high there, yeah have to agree this is a much better version that your first attempt. Remember it's all about patience and practise, you will find one that your happy with and at the end of the day how you feel about your images is important. Nice job.
David.

[gnownad]

Nice improvement there! I was about to suggest lightening the darker areas- but then I read on further down the post! :P

[ramirez0715]

I like your second go at this. However, for me the white dress draws my attention a bit too much towards the bottom. Maybe adding a bit of a blur or vignette might ease the viewer back to the top?

Just a thought.