Grad Pic

[chatterboxg]

Long story short, my son had missed several appointments with professional photographers in my area and time was running short. I have a small house with small walls. Most of my walls have a piece of moulding in the middle of it so I was hard pressed to find a wall as a backdrop for this picture. I took it and figured I'd photoshop it later to clean it up but here's where my problem is. I'm having trouble making the background lighter as I had initially planned. I am having trouble with the area around his hair. I was wondering if someone might be able to suggest how I can complete this so I can forward his picture to the school for his yearbook?

Thanking in advance for any advice I am given.

Tony Grad Pic 1..jpg

[SusanH1970]

Actually, the biggest issue that stood out was the white balance. He's as yellow as the wall behind him.

I opened it in ACR and did a white balance adjustment (took out a LOT of yellow). In CS2 I did a few more color tweaks and brightened his eyes just a touch - it still doesn't look 100% right to me, but it's better, IMHO.

The focus was quite soft as well so I also sharpened it up a bit.

Handsome kid you've got there!

[chatterboxg]

Originally Posted by SusanH1970

Actually, the biggest issue that stood out was the white balance. He's as yellow as the wall behind him.

I opened it in ACR and did a white balance adjustment (took out a LOT of yellow). In CS2 I did a few more color tweaks and brightened his eyes just a touch - it still doesn't look 100% right to me, but it's better, IMHO.

The focus was quite soft as well so I also sharpened it up a bit.

Handsome kid you've got there!

That's what I've been trying to accomplish but for the life of me, I just figure out how to make that happen with photoshop. It took me nearly 4 hours to clean up the shadows behind him on the wall and i've been another few hours playing around with cleaning up the rest.

I noticed how quickly you made the adjustment, is there a quick tip you can give me to make my photoshop experience a lot less painful?

Thanks much!

[SusanH1970]

1. Custom white balance in-camera with a grey card. Two good ones are:

Digital Image Flow Digital Grey Kard - Event White DGK-E B&H

Digital Gray Card

2. Shoot in RAW - much easier to correct colors in ACR, just a few quick slider adjustments.

Hope this helps!

[daddyoproductions]

I find certain colour backgrounds will really just not work and the person never looks right to me. Bright pink is one for me, though I always think it would be cute for the babies. I guess yellow is one too.

If you had shadows on the wall, be sure to move him further from the background next time, or soften your light. It is faster to do that than photoshop it

Congrats on your graduate!

~C