Where to start?

[lunathea]

Let me disclaimer this photo right away by saying I know I did a lot wrong lol. I apparently focused on his shirt instead of his eyes, it's underexposed (I was a fool and didn't realize I had evaluative meter on as opposed to spot and it was an extremely bright, gray day) , I chopped off his elbows, yadayada.

I don't even know where to being in pp to help this image out. I'm using Gimp and I've searched online for tutorials on how to go about it but it's all going a bit over my head and I've honestly had a lot more success with input from all you lovely people!

Long story short this is the middle child of my three brothers and I simply want to get better at capturing them and editing afterwards. One major problem I seem to run into with them is they are Filipino and I always seem to get some strange orange color tones in their skin as opposed to the beautiful tan they always have. Thank you very much, as always I really appreciate it!


Camera Canon EOS REBEL T2i
Exposure 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 250 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV

[Doug Sundseth]

Since it sounds like you're only interested in saving the exposure of this image, I'll only address that.

I'm afraid that I don't speak GIMP, so you'll have to translate from PS. That said, I did a simple levels adjustment, pulling the white point to 200 and setting the gamma to 1.48 and the result seemed reasonable to me. I'm sure you can do the same thing in GIMP, though perhaps with different terminology.

I'll note that when I tried a shadows/highlights adjustment, I got a weird orange skin too, but the levels adjustment seemed natural.

[lunathea]

I'm pretty much interested in a workflow for pp on portraits in general. I don't know what to begin with or how to achieve a good finished look lol. I'm sorry if none of that makes sense, it's been a long day.

[Michael_nine22.com]

I don't know "HOW" to do it in gimp but the steps I use to post process are

- Fix Blemishes
- FIx Color Cast (white balance)
- Smooth Skin
- Exposure
- Dodge face usally around the eyes
- Dodge eyes themselves
- Add contrast/definition to the eyes
- Contrast Adjustment
- Vignette

and thats about it, Hopefully that will point you in the right direction for youtube tutorials or something. GIMP is close to Photoshop so some tutorials might work, but I use Lightroom for the most part

[edbayani]

i would not know how to this in gimp since i've never used any other photoediting software but
photoshop. i,m using cs2. i presume that gimp is similar to photoshop, so i would start by adjusting exposure in levels and do slight color correction. crop a little to cut off the right arm.
select the eyes and sharpen a bit using high pass. you can also use unsharp mask. with the sponge tool set to desaturate, and with a small brush, brush the white of the eyes. it's a bit red.
i attached a sample.

[lunathea]

Ah thanks for the edit Edbayani, that gives me a very good idea of where to go with it.

[RLucas]

In GIMP, on stuff that is underexposed past a point, I will duplicate the layer twice. Change the blend mode to Screen on the top layer. Adjust opacity to taste, and merge down. Then you can play with levels and curves as needed after this. It seems to keep it more clean, and introduces less noise than pushing the levels too much. Just my .02c.
If you have any other Gimp questions, just ask. I know enough about it to get me in trouble.

[lunathea]

LOL, thx Luke I will have to try that out and will shout out at you if I have any more questions