Concert Pic... Help...

[WooD]

Originally Posted by Griggs

Thanks. I realize I should have a DSLR for these shots, but I don't. I'm amazed at the sort of shots I see on here and wish I would've just saved a bit more and bought one.

WooD, how did you get all that information? And what do you recommend I do with the color? I used the dup layer, blur, overlay, opacity to bump up the color a bit, but I don't know how to fix the color on his arm.

Theres a little bit of noise, if you look closley there are some purples and other colors that aren't suppose to be there, does anybody have a program or something to get rid of noise, would that help?

Also, the background of the original photo was pretty black, but does anybody think it "looks" like I deleted the background. If so, does anybody have some advice on how I can lighten that effect.

Thanks.

Griggs,
To get the info on your shot, I just saved your picture to my drive, and right clicked it, went to properties, then details.

I honestly think your doing a great job with the camera your using.

As you can see above JC has done another fine job on fixing up your shot.

[Griggs]

Thanks JC, I'll try to work on what you did and see if I can take your techniques and apply them elsewhere. When you change something like the right arm, do you select that and make a new layer of just it and start working on it? Thats kinda how I understood you would do it and I never really thought of doing all those separate parts like that.

WooD, thanks for the compliment, I feel like I improved quite a bit since my last attempt at a concert, those images had some crazy color and saturation issues. I'm disappointed in my camera and would really like a DSLR but that will have to wait, so for now I'm learning what I can from this one. This camera does take quite a nice picture if the lighting an distance is good.

[Griggs]

JiminyClickit, could you explain a little more how you fix that forearm? How you selected it and lightened it? I'm trying the Magic Wand and Lasso and I'm not getting a very good result. If you could give any tips on your technique, I'd appreciate it, thanks.

I've also used the Lasso Tool to do the shadow and the green you mentioned, I think work on some other areas that need touch up, its seems to work pretty well. I just can't seem to get that forearm decent looking.

I've also been playing with the mic position to see what I like, but I don't know what size crop I want. The original plan was to print this out and I don't know what size, I guess I'll just have to see whether I think its a good enough pic to even print out...

Heres what I've got up to this point



Click here for full size

[jiminyClickit]

Griggs,

That looks pretty good. In the original, the forearm had from left to right:
- a skin tone
- a light mic shadow
- a darker mic shadow
- a darkest skin tone
Using Trace (Adobe PhotoDeluxe), I select the two mic shadows and lighten until similar to skin tone. Then select the darker shadow and lighten to match closer to skin and light shadow. Select the bicep, darken some to more closely resemble forearm. Entire arm from sleeve to wrist is selected, slightly softened/blurred until skin-color and texture match left arm. A touch of Saturation may be needed. Add a little Noise to help remove unnatural smoothness. Some use of blending and cloning tools along the way will help give the arm the round dimensional muscle look.

[Griggs]

Thanks for all the advice... Heres where I'm at right now. I think its pretty much done unless I want to add anything for the background, but I might just leave it as is...

I did quite a bit of touching up since I just learned how =) I removed a lot of greens and purple noise from the hat, shadows of the tee shirt and a couple other places.

[Griggs]

Ok, now I just can't be stopped, I've been fixing color problems all morning now! Heres another, hopefully you can see the color changes.

Before:

After:

[jiminyClickit]

Griggs,

Ride the wave, enjoy this, while improving good photos. Your photography will improve, and what you learn in edit skills will just make it all more rewarding. You're doing fine.

[neilwood]

One thing i would say is that while a DSLR may reduce the issues by allowing more flexibility in apertures, lenses, ISO, shutter speed - it wont get rid of them!

Just enjoy what you are using - your getting pretty good results as it stands with a P&S and then when and if you do decide to go to a DSLR, you will be equipped with a lot more knowledge to achieve great photos.