colors, colors and a black hole

[cristen]

Camera Canon EOS 500D
Exposure 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture f/9.0
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 400
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire

I took this picture of a souvenir shop a long time back. I like it because it is so colorful and the lady caught my attention then as she was deep in thought, apparently couldn't make up her mind on what to buy. The merchant must have felt tired waiting for her that he just squatted on the ground. LOL.

I would like to know if the picture looked so busy with all the merchandise hanging around. The subject is actually the lady but cropping the picture would mean losing the things that interested her in the first place. Another thing that bothers me in this picture is the black hole which appear to have been placed exactly on a spot conforming to the rule of thirds.

I tried my limited PS skills to remedy this at least, but found nothing in my arsenal. What do you think about the camera settings? Is the aperture wrong for this shot? Would you have composed this differently? Or cropped it perhaps for a better presentation? PS advice, anyone?

[Margie22]

Hello! It's an interesting shot but I do think it's a bit busy; my eyes dart around instead of being drawn to one particular spot. If you crop down so the focus is on the girl and the man, that might help? The dominant red table really detracts in my opinion. Thoughts?

[cristen]

hi there, Margie. I agree with you. It is indeed a busy shot. I have problems isolating my subject that is why I seldom post pictures of this kind here. I will try to crop it though, hoping I would retain some interesting feature. Thanks for your comments.

[benchdog]

Hi cristen

This is an interesting shot and I like it a lot. For me the image is a bit flat and the lady seems to get lost. By moving your camera a little right and a bit lower you would have placed her on line of thirds which would have made her more promenant in the picture. Unfortunately in this image she is to far the right to crop.

In PS I would create a duplicate layer and create a softlight overlay. This would make the colors pop. Hope you don't mind I took the liberty to make the adjustment to show you the results.

[cristen]

I cropped the picture to the right of the lady because there were three more people in there that would further crowd my otherwise busy shot .
My skills in photoshop leave much to be desired, so fixing my shot that way is truly appreciated. I will try what you did and I hope it won't be asking a lot from you if you could give me a step by step instructions.Thank you so much, benchdog.

[benchdog]

Hi cristen

Glad to be useful

Open your image in PS

On the right bottom you you should a layers box a layer labeled Background
Right click on it and select create duplicate layer
A box will appear asking you to name it call it Softlight click OK
Now you will see a box drop down box with normal in it
Click the drop down arrow and scroll down and select the softlight option
You will notice your image darken
To the of the drop down box you just select light from is a box called Opacity and it's set to 100% reduce this until you achieve the effect you are looking for
If you save your files as TIF image you can save it and your done
If you save as JPEG you will need to flatten your image before you can save it
From your image drop down menu top left scroll down and select fatten image
Now you save it as a JPEG

Have Fun
Let me if you need more help

[cristen]

Hello, again, Benchdog. I am really thankful I learned a new PS trick from you. Now I don't think I would ever post a shot here without doing the overlay... LOL

If you have time, please check out my new post for critique titled "an old belfry".

Thanks so much for being helpful and unselfish.