Help, need suggestions

[Camdixon]

Well, here is a photo of my grandmother who lives quite far from me, and is turning 92. I wanted to edit this photo to make it look good to send some copies to my family, and for me to keep one as well. I really would appreciate all suggestions on how to edit / crop this. Please say whatever comes to mind, and tell me what you really think of the edits. I'm new to Photoshop, and quite willing to learn.

Here is what I have done to the photo so far.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44401075@N06/4855437668/

I adjusted the levels.
(thanks to LeeR from his tutorial found here: Levels: Getting that professional “Pop” from your photographs « Lucent Design)

I also cropped the photo, because I felt the other parts of the photo were useless detail that didn't add anything (well, except my cousin lol)


Here is the original photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44401075@N06/4854813789/

Here is a copy of the photo with the level adjustments, but not the crop:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44401075@N06/4855435958/


[Edit] Photo Details:

f/5.6
1/400
ISO 400
Lens: 50mm prime (1.8 lowest aperture)
Body: Canon Digital Rebel

[ShantDotMe]

If you can't get any better photo, I would clone out (not crop) the child & the chair on the original photo

[Camdixon]

I can look through the other photos of her although idk if I can get any better. I'll try and find something.

What do you mean by clone out? Like take the grass and paint over the chair to make it grass as well?

[Edit]: the only other picture that I would even think of a possibility is at the link below. It is unedited.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44401075@N06/4855575190/

The only problem with the situation was it was getting close to the end and more of a "let me snap your photo" type of deal instead of "pose for the shot". Plus she was grumpy, Either that or I really didn't compose the shots well enough.

[LeeR]

My wife is a nurse and has a special place in her heart for the elderly. It's true that your grandmother looks a bit grumpy but that isn't unusual for elderly people who are plagued with aches and pains the rest of us know nothing about. However, I do prefer that she is at least looking in the general direction of the camera so we can plainly make out her features. For that reason I have taken a stab at making some improvements to your Grandmother's picture. Here are my results:

[windrider86]

Please post one of your photos here so we can see it!

[ShantDotMe]

Originally Posted by Camdixon

What do you mean by clone out? Like take the grass and paint over the chair to make it grass as well?.

Yes, thats what I meant.

But I like the photo that LeeR did edit/post way more than the 1st. As always, he nailed it

[Camdixon]

Originally Posted by ShantDotMe

Yes, thats what I meant.

But I like the photo that LeeR did edit/post way more than the 1st. As always, he nailed it

I agree. Lee what did you do to the photo? Adjust the levels like the other one? Anything else?

[Camdixon]

Originally Posted by ShantDotMe

Yes, thats what I meant.

But I like the photo that LeeR did edit/post way more than the 1st. As always, he nailed it

I agree. Lee what did you do to the photo? Adjust the levels like the other one and crop it as well? Anything else that I'm not able to see?

Originally Posted by windrider86

Please post one of your photos here so we can see it!

? Another one of her that I edited?

[ShantDotMe]

Originally Posted by Camdixon

? Another one of her that I edited?

I guess she meant to post the photos in the post using the [img] tags & not just puting the url to the flickr page.

you can do this by

[img]http://www.domain.com/folder/file.ext[/img]

note that the url has the extension of the file (usually.jpg), ie it is a link to the image & not to the page.

to include you last photo in the post you should do this

[IMG]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4118/4855575190_4304fe7109_z.jpg[/IMG]

which will show as.-

[LeeR]

Levels was the first thing I did to all my images immediately after importing them. Levels is a great little tool that fixes a number of problems and gives you some opportunities for making some adjustments to suit your personal tastes. That was my original motivation for writing about Levels; I saw so many images that were great, but for the lack of a levels adjustment.
However, Levels is but one tool in the Photoshop/Elements/GIMP arsenal. Others may swear by channels, or curves, or something I haven't learned yet. My current favorite is Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) which improves on the Levels theme and adds sliders to adjust a whole host of other variables.
As for your image, the primary thing I did was a levels adjustment. I noticed that cropped in tight the light on her face got interesting so I played with the gamma slider (pushed a bit to the left) to increase the overall darkness of the image. This is a purely personal choice and you may want to handle it differently. Once you have set the white and black points and corrected the white balance, anything you do from there is a matter of personal taste and artictic vision.