How to make this pop.

[lunathea]

So is it because this photo is essentially brown on brown on brown, or because it's a tad underexposed that it's not 'popping' at all? His skin tone is pretty accurate, although it seems uploading to flickr sharpened him and made him a tad orange. And I need to fix that bit of sky in the corner. That and his skin has this weird flush on his face, around his mouth and such, I'm not certain what causes it or how to get rid of it.

Suggestions, input, please and thank you?

I have to give all of you child photographers credit lol. Tonight was my first night attempting to coerce my brothers into a quasi shoot, and the neighbor kids highjacked their attention left and right. Plus I'm sure they got tried of me trying to figure out wth I was doing lol. It was rough, enjoyable, most of all a learning experience . Thanks for all the help this week btw!



Camera Canon EOS REBEL T2i
Exposure 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture f/5.0
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV

[MrJones]

your focus is great, caught the eyes in focus and sharp.
but you've got the WB off and it's really underexposed.
try adding a levels layer and go through each color separately (red, green, blue instead of RGB) to fix it.

[EmyB]

It's a nice photo but I see what you mean about not "popping".

Maybe it's because the background is too close, maybe it would have looked better more separate from the background?

[lunathea]

Originally Posted by MrJones

your focus is great, caught the eyes in focus and sharp.
but you've got the WB off and it's really underexposed.
try adding a levels layer and go through each color separately (red, green, blue instead of RGB) to fix it.

Why do you say the wb is off (my monitor isn't calibrated yet, saving some cash to buy the spyder to do it)? And I'll give seperate levels a whirl, ty for the feedback .

[graciousness]

Hi there,

The photo is not popping because to me, it is underexposed. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with post processing, though.

If you don't mind, I have done a very quick edit just to show you that you can improve on this photo with simple things like:

1) White Balance correction - by choosing on a 'neutral' gray, it will remove that orange/red tones overall;
2) Increase Exposure - basically bring him out of the dark
3) Adding a new filter layer - I used green to tone down the redness just a tad bit more with significant reduction in opacity, of course.

That's all I've done, really. You may find that step 3 is not even necessary. You have properly focused on his eyes and that's the most important aspect in portraiture (I think anyway). You probably could have gotten away with using f/4.0 to bring in more exposure, but probaby the best way to have exposed this more properly is by way of fill flash. The shade may have been too shady and since he has brown skin, needed the extra exposure.

Sorry it's not the best edit. Just wanted to quickly show you that you can fix it however way you want it to pop through post processing.

Did you shoot raw? It's always best to shoot raw so that you can have a lot more flexibility with post processing, especially in cases like this when it's underexposed.

There is something that I didn't touch on and that is I didn't touch the shadow areas around his mouth/chin. I wouldn't even know what would have caused that and yeah, that is weird. You can do further work using Photoshop but I think that would be too much. Also, didn't touch on that piece of sky on the top corner. Can't crop this photo anymore to remove it otherwise you would also crop off part of his face. Not a big deal, really.

His lips are also quite pink/red....didn't touch on that with edit and left it as is. This can be fixed by way of layer mask with Photoshop if you wanted to tone down the redness.

Anyhoo, I hope you don't mind my sample edit. I can remove it if you wish.

Cheers,

Grace

[SusanH1970]

What a handsome boy! I love his serious expression.

Agreed that it's underexposed and your white balance is off. Your focus is great, the eyes are tack sharp! Love the light in his eyes, too. Dark eyes always look so pretty and sparkly with nice catchlights. A nitpick about composition - his eyes are dead center. Having them in the top third of the frame would have given this a bit more "oomph".

I hope you don't mind, I had a play also - I'll take it down if you'd prefer. Without a calibrated monitor, I'm not sure how much difference you'll see, but it looks good on mine, lol.

I opened it up in ACR and brought the exposure up a bit and adjusted the white balance to cool it off a bit (he was very warm/yellow). In CS2, I did a selective color layer set to neutrals and pulled out a tiny bit of yellow and magenta. You had mentioned in a previous post that your brothers have olive/brown skin, so I didn't want to go too far and change it too much. I did another selective color layer, only lassoing his lips this time, set it to reds and pulled out some magenta so they weren't quite as hot pink (I tried to keep it natural, though - I'm guessing he has really pink lips IRL?).

I cloned the corner, then burned the midtones and shadows at about 10% on the tree bark and his shirt. Lastly, resized and sharpened it a bit.

That's pretty much it, took about 2 minutes. Again, if you don't like it or prefer I didn't play, just let me know and down it goes.

ETA: Just looked at your EXIF - I definitely would have opened up my ap and used a faster shutter speed. You definitely lucked out with getting it this sharp at 1/80th, and closing down to 3.2 or 2.8 would have blurred the tree a bit, separating him from the background.

[graciousness]

I was counting on you to post a better version and here you are, Susan! Yey!!!!!!!!!!

I think if I tried and do what you did, it would take me half an hour - I'm such a photoshop newbie! I've only just learnt about layers last night. Terrible, isn't it?

Wonderful edit. Cheers!

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by graciousness

I was counting on you to post a better version and here you are, Susan! Yey!!!!!!!!!!

I think if I tried and do what you did, it would take me half an hour - I'm such a photoshop newbie! I've only just learnt about layers last night. Terrible, isn't it?

Wonderful edit. Cheers!

LOL Grace! Thank you, you're a sweetheart. When I was new at Photoshop I wouldn't have even attempted an edit like this - yours is great for being a newbie!

[lunathea]

Holy shit. My fiance just adjusted my monitor for a temp cal. according to how it looks on our tablet until I figure out which physical calibrater to get. The difference between the two is amazing. I also can't believe I didn't include my exif data to begin with lol.

Thank you very much for the feedback all, the edits are 1million times better. I particularily love yours Susan. I'm going to open it back up and try to get as close to your edit as possible. A few more questions, I'm sorry for them all :
" In CS2, I did a selective color layer set to neutrals and pulled out a tiny bit of yellow and magenta." I'm familiar with this layer, I was just wondering if you selected only his skin tones or did it to the whole photo, did you do this to all the channels or just red or yellow, and was it at full opacity? He is just a smidgen darker than the edit, is this just something I should bring down just a milibit in curves?

Is it possible to edit in ACR then CS then port back into ACR?

Yeah his lips (all of theirs actually omg you should see the 11yr old's) are super red.

I intend to crop the pic to offset the eyes. I was just messing around with different apertures, that 50mm is a learning curve for me and I struggle with exposure with it for some reason.

Grace I want your 'newbie' edit skills lol jezuz!!!

I just got my wisdom teeth out today and am not really all here lol, I don't even remember what my other questions were. I'm sorry if this is terrible to read lol and that it's a book.

I have a few more I'm fairly happy with, I can definately see this becoming kind of addicting lol. I want to take the little one back out alone, he loves to dress up and listens very very well when there aren't a ton of other kids around. Thank you so much for everything guys!

[edbayani]

here is another easier way. duplicate layer, change blending mode to screen, reduce opacity to about 60%, flatten. in levels, choose the middle eyedropper tool and click on the grey background. this will correct the wb. lasso the bg making the size as big as the white area on the top right. press ctrl/alt and move the selected gray bg to the right to cover the white area. deselect and done.