The Bride Needs Help

[vjhoward]

I like this shot, but something is not settling right with me. The shot is straight out of camera. What would you do to make it better? Crop? Dodge? Brighten or change exposure? Fill light? Color? Curves/contrast?

Note, I use Lightroom to manage my photos and perform any post-processing.

D300S, 18-200 VR lens shot at 42mm, SB600 flash with diffuser pointed straight up
ISO200 for 1/40 at f4.5

Here Comes the Bride | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[MrJones]

gotta help a bride in need!
so as I see it, the main issue here is the background. it's just too dark and sharp for my taste.
since we're dealing with a little girl here, I wanted to go for that dreamy affect and this is what came out:




basically: gussian blur with a mask, brightness to the end and contrast to the other end on the background, red color saturation to live up the skin tone and some lights to make things a bit more interesting.
just wish the flowers were in focus too.

[edbayani]

background is dark. selected the little girl by using quickmask and a sharp brush and with blur tool blurred some of the edges where image is soft and exit quick mask to have a selection and put the selection on another layer. adjusted the original layer with levels to lighten it and blurred with gaussian blur. with soft brush, opacity at 20% added the out of focus blobs. went to the layer of the girl and with levels, adjusted to lighten and have some contrast and add some warmth.

[MrJones]

edbayani, as always... you take it to perfection
love the edit!

[edbayani]

thank you mr. jones!

[vjhoward]

Awesome feedback! Thanks for the instructions and examples. I both perspectives, but edbayani, you did take it to a level of perfection. It looks like you did this in Photoshop (reference to layers). I don't have Photoshop, but will see if I can reproduce in Lightroom.

Many, many, many thanks!

[vjhoward]

MrJones and ebayani,

Thanks for feedback. I am using Lightroom and it does not appear that I have all the tools you used to make the adjustments. In particular, using layers and Gaussian blur is not in Lightroom. I tried a few other techniques in Lightroom, leveraging from this DPS post: The Dave Hill Look in Lightroom. I did not follow it exactly, but I think I got a little more "life and light" to the photo. Sure would be nice to have a Gaussian blur as part of the Adjustment brush in LR...

Thanks for all your help!

[edbayani]

definitely looks better. just wish lightroom had layers and blur. i have never used any other software but photoshop since photoshop 3 so i really am not savvy about lightroom or any other pp programs.

[MrJones]

looks better.. funny to see that there are houses in the background

[autofocus]

Simple solution applied here..no layers, no masks, etc. There may be better ways, but this was quick and painless


1) Shadow / Highlight to balance image a little
2) Levels using the white eyedropper on her dress
3) Select the girl with the magic wand tool and hit inverse
4) Applied lens blur to background
5) Lightened background in levels
6) Deselect, Done