What can I do with this photo?

[Skippy2]

Hello,

I'm very new to photography and have very little experience of PP, could anyone advise me what else I could do with this photo I took the other week of my friends little boy - it looks very washed out!!!

I have picnik, Gimp and Picasa






Thanks Skip xx

[teaking]

Im not much of a post processor so I cant help too much but the basic things you can try are Curves and levels adjustment to push out the colours a bit, Contrast, Saturation, and sharpness... those are I think what most people will call the minimal post processing.

[RLucas]

I hope you don't mind. I will take them down if you wish. Here is what I did.
Open file in Gimp
duplicate layer, set blend mode to overlay
go to colors> levels, and set grey point. I used the shirt sleeve for this.

Merge layers

Duplicate layer, set blend mode to overlay at 50% opacity.
On this new layer, go to colors> color balance > select midtones. I slid the cyan/blue slider to about -63, and the yellow/blue slider to about +93. Click save.

Merge layers.
Go to Colors> Hue/Saturation. Click on Master in the center of the color wheel. I slid this to the left about -30. Do what you like. Click save.

Duplicate layer, and set blend mode to overlay.
Go to Filters>Generic> High Pass. You may have to down load this from the gimp registry, Or you can just use Unsharp mask. I like the high pass because it doesn't create alot of excess noise. I picked a radius of 20, and a contrast of 5. Click ok.

Flatten image and save.
I hope you like it! And again, I will take it down if you wish.
before.
after.

[Skippy2]

Hi Luke,

Thanks for that it looks much better and there is no need to take them down, help is always much appreciated

Skip xx

[RLucas]

I am glad you like it. I am learning too, so please forgive the long winded post. I am sure there are shortcuts I don't know yet, and someone will come along and offer more help.

[MSidPhoto]

Post processing can't do much to make this photo look better. You need to work on the composition, posing, is of course natural but composition and focus both could use some serious work.

[FoG]

You could do lots to this from Black and White to contrast etc etc hue saturation what I suggest is copy and paste as new image then use layers (such as hue saturation lyer ) to adjust and play about with the shot without changing it you could use a blur to throw the shoulder out of focus in one layer and keep the clarity in the baby in the main then when you are happy just flatten it ... will have a play later and show you.. GIMP is fairly easy to get around I use Serif Photoplus myself so will just say what I did and you can copy in GIMP


People are put off by layers but if you copy and paste as new image you can play about with anything without hurting the priginal image layers are just a way to not go over the original till finished

HEre you go four layers first one.. Gaussian blur it

Second cut out (erase the baby) then copy twice as new layer... next layer to background gaussian blur and reduce opacity to 75

Next layer Soft blend opacity to 75%

next layer keep as normal reduce opacity slightly to keep the clarity and let some colour through

once done.... B&W conversion adjust colours to sduit I reduced blue right down and cyan turned red up and orange (for higher contrast try turning them right up with blue and cyan...

Hope you like




please note this was done quickly you could erase more of the babies chin to soften that area or use the blur effect with a selcted area to do it ... either way hope you like and feel free to mail or PM to ask advice

[sjlarue]

Originally Posted by Skippy2

Hello,

I'm very new to photography and have very little experience of PP, could anyone advise me what else I could do with this photo I took the other week of my friends little boy - it looks very washed out!!!

I have picnik, Gimp and Picasa



Thanks Skip xx

Although I don't have Gimp, I would assume that it has some sort of levels adjustment and masking ability. This was a simple levels adjustment layer of the whole image in CS3 then I masked out the blue BG.: