best PP for portraits

[jax314]

My PP skills are weak. This is a simple duplicate later, blur, and then overlay....Does this type of PP look good with portraits? Does it work in this case? Does the increased contrast this causes make her seem underexposed? Any other "quick" PP techniques that would have been better?

Thanks!

BTW, any other suggestions woudl be helpful too as always!



Camera: Nikon D5000
Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/9.0
Focal Length: 90 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: On, Return detected

[zona5101]

I think the PP looks ok. A couple of things that stand out to me...the hair/hair bow is a bright part of the pic. Your eye is drawn there so I might cut the blur there a bit to give the impression of sharpness...maybe not, another choice would be to burn it down a bit so it isn't so bright. The second thing i see is the eyes are very dark. It would be nice to have some catchlight in there & maybe lighten the irises in post. Lastly, working in direct sun is tough, makes the lighting hard, even when you use fill flash as you have done here.

[SusanH1970]

Awwww, sweet photo! However...the PP really isn't working for me. The blur just makes the photo look soft overall, and the colors are oversaturated. I do agree with Bruce about wishing there was more light on her face and in her eyes, but this is tricky with backlighting. I'd love to see a SOOC if you wouldn't mind posting it.

[jax314]

This is why I post so much in this forums...there's so much still to learn and I need the constructive criticism!! Thanks so much for taking the time to look at all my pictures...I'll slow down a bit once I start "getting" it

Anyways, here's SOOC...

[zona5101]

a voice through a loudspeaker: "Put the mouse down and step away from the computer! "
Your SOOC shot is better! Colors are more natural, pic is plenty sharp, background is already OOF and you can see her iris color. If any thing I might make her eyes pop a bit by adding a blank layer, painting the lower iris with white then reducing the opacity to somwhere around 7% to 10%.

[RubyT]

SOOC is much better. Her skin looks orange in your original edit. All I would do for a pic like this is clean processing, I wouldn't add anything fancy like extra blur. Maybe a tiny bit on the midtones to brighten the face juuuuuust a touch, and that's about it.

[SusanH1970]

ITA with Bruce and Ruby. Hope you don't mind, I had a quick play at a clean edit.

Opened in ACR, bumped exposure and added fill light, used recovery slider to bring back blown highlights.
Opened in CS2. Duplicated layer, lassoed the eyes loosely, layer via copy, set blending mode to screen at about 75% opacity, used soft eraser to erase back in everything but the eyeballs. Flattened image.
Opened levels and slid middle (midtones) slider a bit to the left to give the midtones an extra boost.
Duplicated layer, set blending mode to soft light at 30%, flattened and saved.

Let me know if you'd like me to take it down. It's still not perfect but I wanted to show you how a bright, clean edit could be done super-quick. This took me about 3 minutes.

ETA: The orange color cast around her mouth and nose is a reflection from the orange Easter egg she's holding. There are ways to get rid of it, but it's a lot more involved than this quickie edit.

[jax314]

Very nice guys, and much appreciated.

THANK YOU so much for posting instructions....I feel confident I can play around a bit and try to learn why each step was done and how/when to aaply it in the future..

I love the edit...and I love the feedback. Thanks for being so helpful!

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by jax314

Very nice guys, and much appreciated.

THANK YOU so much for posting instructions....I feel confident I can play around a bit and try to learn why each step was done and how/when to aaply it in the future..

I love the edit...and I love the feedback. Thanks for being so helpful!

You're very welcome, I'm glad you were happy with my edit. Definitely play around, it's the best way to learn!