Semi-formal portrait taken by friend

[minimidgy]

I have a picture here of my girlfriend and I when I took her out for a nice dinner. I had my friend shoot a picture using his camera, a Nikon D40. It really is not that great of a picture, but it's the best I have. I need to know what I can or should do to make the photo better.

I have already cropped the photo. I have done some quick fix up but I still see some problems:

• Noise, particularly on my suit jacket
• Harsh shadows (on faces and on background)
• Piece of dust on my shoulder
• Neither of our hair colors is that red. Mine is brown with some red, and hers is mostly red with a hint of brown
• In trying to expose the pinstripes on my suit, I lightened the blacks. Both her dress and my suit are black (with pinstripes on the suit)

I think the noise and the overly red hair are the two most pressing problems.

Here is the original version (cropped) and what I have done so far:

Original


Edited

[freybear3]

Hi,

A different background color would be better. I noticed a few shadows that could be cropped more near the heads. And i noticed you said those werent your hair colors, i would just keep messing with the colors, until it is correct. Pretty good photo.

[Japaslavian]

Background changes are tedious, but it could help. I'd say at least remove the shadows on the wall you have if you decide not to.

[mswebb]

I prefer the grey background to the whitish in the edited version.

I would try to get rid of more shadow behind and play a bit with the white balance to get rid of the redish skin tones.

Nail those and the picture is just fine.

[minimidgy]

Okay here is an update:


I used "Replace Color" to reduce the redness in the hair of both her and I, each on separate layers. I then faded the opacity of the new layers to make the changes more subtle and therefore less noticeable. I removed the piece of lint on my shoulder using the Clone Stamp tool. What does everyone think of my edits? It may be washed out now, but I'm not concerned with that part at the moment.

Another thing I am concerned about is the detail on my suit. I am wearing a pin-stripe suit, and the camera did not pick it up that great. Right now, I can see the pin-stripe pattern, but I could not in the original. By "unveiling" the pinstripes, the suit looks kinda grainy and washed out. Should I simply tweak the image so the suit is basically a plain black?

I also still need to remove the shadows. How should I do this?

Thanks for all the help!

[minimidgy]

Any more help?

[flomaster]

Originally Posted by minimidgy

Any more help?

his left arm is REALLY REALLY distracting the shadow on the wall is giving off a double vision effect and thus giving me a head ache the more I look at it.

-=Jason=-

[xhan]

A Vignette should sort out those weird shadow problems!!

I had a quick go with a few actions.