Severe Portrait Edit

[scootermcq]

What do you "feel" when you look at this edit? Have I done an artist image of a beautiful young lady, or I have I ruined a lovely picture of a beautiful young lady?

Nikon D90
28mm
1/60
f5.6

[AdrenoJunkie]

It doesn't suit my tastes personally. I think if you left it alone it would be a beautiful picture.

[CheaperKings]

Originally Posted by AdrenoJunkie

It doesn't suit my tastes personally. I think if you left it alone it would be a beautiful picture.

Unfortunately, I am going to have to agree. I'm sorry but, it kinda looks like she's just an image painted on the wall behind her...

[windrider86]

Love the dress, the pose and the background. Just to over sharpened. Easy to do. Do you still have the original?

[scootermcq]

Thanks for the feedback guys....

Originally Posted by windrider86

Love the dress, the pose and the background. Just to over sharpened. Easy to do. Do you still have the original?

Yes, this was the original.

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by scootermcq

Thanks for the feedback guys....



Yes, this was the original.

The original is quite nice. It stands on it's own very well. It just needs some contrast adjustment, and maybe a slight sharpen. When you sharpen to the point of having halos, you have gone too far, which is easy to do, we all have.

Actually, i have been using a technique for sharpening that Windrider talked about ona thread somewhere on here that I can't find now.
You make two duplicate layers of the base image. On the middle layer you apply the unsharp mask. You can actually oversharpen this layer if you wish. Then on the top layer, you create a layer mask, and paint over areas you want sharpened with the paint brush and black( which is actually transparent), and this will show the sharpened areas. i.e. eyes, and any other areas you care to do. You can even adjust the opacity of this layer to taste as well. You have more control over what is sharpened or not.
I have been experimenting with this for about a month or so, and I am quite happy with the results. I like it even more than the high pass method.

Just an example. Will take it down if you wish.

[scootermcq]

Thanks RLucas.... that is a good technique to have and I appreciate you sharing it. NP leaving up your edit, it might help someone else along the way.

The effect I was after was:

Originally Posted by kencaleno

Try This:

Load your Jpeg image into photoshop -

Ctrl+J

Filter>Other>high pass-33pixels

Layer blend mode-hard light

Ctrl+J

Alt+Click on New layer icon at bottom of layers palette

Layer blend mode hard light

Check "Fill with hard-light neutral color -50% grey

Add Hue/Saturation adjustment layer-set to -40

Flatten and save


Just alter settings to suit your taste-Regards,Ken

From Ken, laid out in this:

What is this process called? thread

I guess I missed the mark a little and need to keep working on this technique....

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by scootermcq

Thanks RLucas.... that is a good technique to have and I appreciate you sharing it. NP leaving up your edit, it might help someone else along the way.

The effect I was after was:




From Ken, laid out in this:

What is this process called? thread

I guess I missed the mark a little and need to keep working on this technique....

It's High Pass, but IMO 33pixels is way too much! I would start out around 10 pixels or so. You just want a faint white edge line showing. The hard light blend mode doesn't work to well with portraits either. I always get really bad color variations. I usually use overlay or soft light, and reduce the opacity to taste.
High pass works by just mainly sharpening the edge areas and not uniform fields of color to keep the noise down, but when you make the radius too large, it will cause the halo effect you have here.

If you were going for something like the OP of that thread wanted, I think she tries to squeeze as much contrast out of the image as she possibly can, then from there you can duplicate the layer and set it to screen mode. I usually will then desaturate the layer and reduce the opacity to about 50% or so. You can either add a layer mask and paint the color back in, or merge down and raise the saturation back up. I would rather use the paint on method myself.