Please Critique, honest opinions please

[bubblegumsnapshots]

I want to show the wrinkles, slight imperfections as she is 102. What do you think, I need another eye on this?

[Fotogreen]

You are kidding, right?
What the hell did you do? Looks so fake and unreal, red and scary....

[bubblegumsnapshots]

Originally Posted by Fotogreen

You are kidding, right?
What the hell did you do? Looks so fake and unreal, red and scary....

Um No, you know this is the first post I have made and this is what I hear. I didn't askto be berated, I asked how to make ithe image better. She was red toned and the only thing I did was bump up the saturation a bit and the contrast. I also took away alot of things that were not easy to look at. She is 102, do you think she's going to be super model quality????

Anyone else...can you suggest ways how to improve the image? One problem I have is her skin all around her eye socket is red. Her eyes are deep blue, but the whites are red tinted almost. I don't want to make them white and take away from the reality.

[Sterling]

You want to show wrinkes and slight imperfections? Are you trying to really embellish these things or are you trying to provide an accurate portrait or what? I'm not sure why you would increase saturation and then wonder how to tone down the redness? In my honest opinion, after 102 years, she probably deserves a more complimentary likeness.

[mermaidshells]

Berating aside...

I think you kind of over did it on the bumping of the saturation and contrast. Take that contrast and saturation down a bit. If you want to get rid of the redness I'd suggest adjusting the Color Balance (which you can find under Image->Adjustments->Color Balance) from the 'hotter colors' (red,yellow,magenta) to the 'cooler colors' (blue,green,cyan). This of course is assuming that you're working in Photoshop.

I'd suggest doing a quick search for tutorials that will get rid of facial redness, perhaps you'll find more of what you're looking for there. Be sure to include what program you're using in your search as that may be of service too.

Either way best of luck!

[Marija]

Have you tried in black and white? That's the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw the photo.
I'm very sorry for your experience with first answer. Hope you'll continue to be on DPS because here are plenty of people who are kind and willing to help

[FallinWoman]

Can you share the SOOC?

[CaptainNH]

Like Marija, I also immediately thought of a b&w.

Oldies (and newborns) often have blotchy red skin and b&w is a great (and time efficient) way of toning it down.

[naeno]

Let me be the first to welcome you to DPS!

What a kind looking woman! I'm sure she's also very strong to have made it to 102!

The coloring is quite off, which has been stated previously, so I won't go into further detail. However, one thing that has not been touched on is that when the picture is viewed large, you can see that focus actually fell on her nose rather than her eyes. Portraiture is all about the eyes, no matter the age of the person being photographed. Might I make the following suggestion (let me know if you want me to remove it, and I gladly will). I decided to desaturate, but didn't want to go entirely b&w.


The steps I took to achieve this were:

1. Open the image in GIMP, and duplicate the layer
2. Go to Colors-Hue/Saturation and desaturated the colors a bit, then selected around the eyes using the lasso tool (and feathering the edges) and desaturated more so the skin around the eyes balanced with the rest of her skin
3. Selected around the entire eye area using the lasso tool (again, feathering the edges), and used Filters-Enhance-Unsharp Mask to sharpen up the area around the eyes. Then, I duplicated this step several times on the iris/pupil to get the eyes sharp.
4. Duplicated the top layer, and added a Filter-Blur-Gaussian Blur (set to 5.0). This was to throw the nose out of focus. Then, on this same layer I added a white layer mask. Using a black brush, I painted back in the eyes so they were sharp again. (If you are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, please just ask). Looking at it again, I probably should have masked back in her lips too so they remained sharper.
5. Flattened the image and saved.

Please let me know if you have any questions. This all honestly took me about 5 mins to do. It took a lot longer to type. Good luck!

[bubblegumsnapshots]

Originally Posted by naeno

Let me be the first to welcome you to DPS!

What a kind looking woman! I'm sure she's also very strong to have made it to 102!

The coloring is quite off, which has been stated previously, so I won't go into further detail. However, one thing that has not been touched on is that when the picture is viewed large, you can see that focus actually fell on her nose rather than her eyes. Portraiture is all about the eyes, no matter the age of the person being photographed. Might I make the following suggestion (let me know if you want me to remove it, and I gladly will). I decided to desaturate, but didn't want to go entirely b&w.


The steps I took to achieve this were:

1. Open the image in GIMP, and duplicate the layer
2. Go to Colors-Hue/Saturation and desaturated the colors a bit, then selected around the eyes using the lasso tool (and feathering the edges) and desaturated more so the skin around the eyes balanced with the rest of her skin
3. Selected around the entire eye area using the lasso tool (again, feathering the edges), and used Filters-Enhance-Unsharp Mask to sharpen up the area around the eyes. Then, I duplicated this step several times on the iris/pupil to get the eyes sharp.
4. Duplicated the top layer, and added a Filter-Blur-Gaussian Blur (set to 5.0). This was to throw the nose out of focus. Then, on this same layer I added a white layer mask. Using a black brush, I painted back in the eyes so they were sharp again. (If you are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, please just ask). Looking at it again, I probably should have masked back in her lips too so they remained sharper.
5. Flattened the image and saved.

Please let me know if you have any questions. This all honestly took me about 5 mins to do. It took a lot longer to type. Good luck!

This is actually the portrait, the other was more of an art thing but...thank you for pointing out the focus issue, and for those with suggestions. I did try to desaturate a little and did not sharpen her as much. This is going to be send to the newspaper so I think it will be black/white but this is also going to be printed for her bday party at the care center. Let me know thoughts,suggestions...Thanks!