Everett - 9 Months Old

[aRad82]

Hi all. I am very new at all of this and would like some critique regarding this shot as well as tips to make it better by way of PP - I know his face is really reddish and a little dark maybe? This is my son and I think he is just beautiful...so...like every mom out there, it's hard to know how/what to improve...because I'm just a little bias! Please feel free to edit and share if you'd like as well. Thanks!



EXIF
Lens: Canon 18-55mm kit lens
ISO: 400
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure: 1/250s
Focal Length: 43mm

[sican]

I took the liberty and made a quick 5min edit to your photo.
What I did:
Cropped the photo to move portrait from center, remove bg distraction and draw attention to eyes.
Increased contrast and saturation. Sharpened the image slightly. Here is the result:


I also felt the need to turn it into a monochrome/dualchrome photo which turned out well. I prefer it than the coloured version:


Hope you liked the edit, and leaned something from it in terms of photo improvement

Regards,
Alex Cican

[ricklumpas]

I agree he is beautiful. I bet you have plenty of portraits of him. Babies are not easy to shoot and your model looks very relaxed. I can say that part of the hat is blown out and the skin is a bit underexposed. I must admit that sican's crop did improve its composition but I didn't like both the tweaked contrast and the monochrome.

"I am very new at all of this and would like some critique regarding this shot as well as tips to make it better by way of PP" - I say focus more on being an artist than a technician.

[aRad82]

Thank you both very much! I do like the crop and the resulting composition a lot better. Like, I said, I am completely green at photography and my camera - I wish I had more time to play and read about it, but unfortunately I don't! (2 little boys aged 2 and under will do that!) I hope to eventually take shots that need very little editing if at all, but that is definitely not the case at this stage

[irishmuth]

Some lightening of the picture helped a ton. Also, the skin color is difficult b/c there is a lot of redness, but yet the hat is casting a blue color cast. I used a selective coloring layer in photoshop to get the most natural skin tone I could and this is what I came up with.

Beautiful baby!

[RLucas]

I love it when someone asks to have their photos edited! Now I can't wait to get home and have a try at it! Mike, as always, has a great edit there. The skin tone is a little more neutral now. I think the image to begin with is good, so there really shouldn't be too much work involved, except for the color casts. This should be fun!

[aRad82]

Wow, that looks great Irishmuth! Thank you for taking your time to do that. The selective coloring and lightening really helped it a lot. I knew when I took the picture that his hat was going to cast somewhat of a shadow..but forgot that it would be blue-ish too. I liked the picture overall, but knew something could be done with the cast - to make it pop a lot more...I just don't know how...but you did it! Thanks again!

I love it when someone asks to have their photos edited!

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not RLucas...I hope not! Because I love seeing what other people (who know what they're doing with PP) can do for different portraits/candid shots and what I can learn from them! I have so much to learn! Can't wait to see what you come up with! Thanks in advance!

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by aRad82

Wow, that looks great Irishmuth! Thank you for taking your time to do that. The selective coloring and lightening really helped it a lot. I knew when I took the picture that his hat was going to cast somewhat of a shadow..but forgot that it would be blue-ish too. I liked the picture overall, but knew something could be done with the cast - to make it pop a lot more...I just don't know how...but you did it! Thanks again!

I love it when someone asks to have their photos edited!

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not RLucas...I hope not! Because I love seeing what other people (who know what they're doing with PP) can do for different portraits/candid shots and what I can learn from them! I have so much to learn! Can't wait to see what you come up with! Thanks in advance!

I apologize if I came across that way. There was no sarcasm intended. I was just excited. I am extremely bored with my own photos.

[aRad82]

No problem...it really didn't...maybe I was just a little paranoid because I'm so new!

[RLucas]

Here is what I came up with. First I cropped tighter to eliminate most of the distractions in the background. Made a duplicate layer and smoothed just a bit to get rid of some of the banding of color in the shadow of the hat. Made a duplicate layer and desaturated preserving luminosity. Changed layer mode to screen and reduced opacity. This lightened the image as a whole, but kept most of the contrast intact. I merged this layer down then set the black point using the dropper tool right above the ear on the left. This helped with some local contrast around his face. I then merged down and played with the saturation settiing until I was happy. Overall my edit has more blue tones, but I think it works here just because of the light source being directly overhead, and shining through the hat brim. This was probably one of the more fun edits I have done. the color casts were a challenge, but it helps me learn. I hope you like it!

You have a beautiful son!