Forum: Photography


Subject: Help Needed ..... Please!

BibbyBear opened this issue on Mar 30, 2008 ยท 16 posts


Tanchelyn posted Sun, 30 March 2008 at 10:13 AM

I haven't seen her apart from on your portrait of her. I personally like the origial more than the postworked one.

I had a quick go at it and in case you like this one, I did the following:

1/ open in PS.
2/ image>mode>16bit . This is because that way you won't have too many lost values (gaps). In case your version of ps or other soft does not permit to do this, it's no drama.
3/ Open the channels panel. The red one is too bright, the blue one too dark. Dark means not influencing on a mask. So select the green one, drag it to copy at the bottom of the panel a,d Ctrl-click onthe copy's icon. It is now loaded as a mask. Reselect the to one and deselect the copy so you get the "normal" image back.
4/ Go back to the layers panel, select your image and drag it to copy. Then click the icon to add a mask to this copy. Your channel will automatically be loaded. What is white on the mask , ie the light colours on your photo will be most influenced. The dark ones less,and black not at all. You already have enough darks and blacks.
5/ Now select the layer with the copy of your original -not your mask!!- open the levels dialog and select first the red, then the green and then the blue channel and do the following per channel:
6/ While holding down Alt, drag the right part of the slider inwards. The image will become black. Drag untill you start seeing some colour appear. Stop, and do the same to the next channel.
7/ You now have much more contrast. Select the mask by clicking on it, and open curves for it. Play a bit with the curve to see what it does.
8/ Take the sharpen tool and set it to some 10% and carefully sharpen the highlights in her eyes.

You can do a lot more, but this is in my opinion a good way to start.

have fun!

There are no Borg. All resistance is fertile.