Today at I Heart Faces they are doing Constructive Feedback Friday. As we all know Constructive Criticism is sometimes bad and sometimes good. It's how we all learn.
Above is my edited version done in CS4, the photo was taken in JPEG but I used Camera RAW for my edits. For whatever reason I got the background focused and not her. The colors still seem too "blue" for me. I would love a way to have it focus on her even though it's not in focus and still look good.
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Hi, I love this shot, it's really sweet. I think if I was editing it I would zoom in a bit closer, croped it at an angle where the child's head is in one of the corners, sharpened the face or the entire picture even, burned the edges, perhaps brighten the shot ever so slightly, but that's just me, your picture is beautiful. To sharpen the face you can use smart sharpen or unsharp mask in CS4. You can also install Rita's coffee shop action called Vivid, Rita's actions are free and wonderful, you can find her button on the I heart faces side bar. You can also purchase the "totally radd" action pack which has numerous sharpening tools.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of your camera settings, I would use a faster shutter speed and if necessary a higher ISO (not too high, 500 max). When used outdoors, a low setting of a flash(external flash is better than built in flash), -1/3 or so can also brighten your shot, improve clearity and still produce a natural look. It can also ballance out shadows on the face that you can get shooting on a sunny day. I would open the aperture all the way, to 4.2 when taking a portrait(if that's as low as you got), I would use spot or evaluative meetering in metering mode. If your camera shows you your spot meter (red dots arranged in a shape of a diamond in your shot) in the view finder I would select one particular spot and make sure that spot is on the face when you shoot. Beautiful kids you have!
I would also do a tilt and crop a bit more on the photo. Try a warming action to help with the blue's (Pioneer Woman has a great one). Unfortunately you can't fix the focus, but you can sharpen up her eyes (PW also has an action for this), that may help a bit. I would also boost the saturation a bit to bring out the great color!
ReplyDeleteAw, it's too bad about the focus. She's a cutie.
ReplyDeleteI like her little hand touching her foot, too. Your exposure looks good, but you're right, it's a little blue, colorwise. I use PSE5, so I'm not sure how to warm up a photo in CS4. I would just do a warm photo filter over the whole thing and see how that looks. Or even Enhance>Adjust Color>Remove color cast and click on either the white bow or her white shirt. You can click and undo until you get a color close to what you like. The focus is harder. You can soften the background to give the illusion of focus on your child. I guess blur the background and mask her back. Then sharpen her and mask back the blurred background. Converting to b/w will also give the appearance of sharpness, too. Here are a couple of quick edits if you're interested. It's
hard to tell if I've helped any on the sharpness at this size, though.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y286/NanasMama/momarazziDSC_0008edit.jpg
[IMG]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y286/NanasMama/momarazziDSC_0008editbw.jpg[/IMG]
what a cutie! I think everyone gave good ideas here.
ReplyDeleteI would basically crop it. That would take give you more boost than anything, than like the others said adjusting the colors or saturation and sharpen a bit would really help.
Your daughter is beautiful. :) I like how you cropped your "fix". Although I may crop out a little more background behind her. (but that is just me, I don't think there is anything wrong with your crop.) I'm not sure if you'd be able to bring her in focus in photoshop. What Tanya said about your camera settings for getting an infocus subject will help. But what sometimes helps when I have a "fuzzy" subject is a black and white conversion. This may not sharpen her a whole lot but it may help with how it looks. It kinda takes the edge off. ;)
ReplyDeleteI used Aurora and did some editting of your photo. it's too bad that she isn't in focus she's a sweetie. I darkened a little and added some crisp. I also warmed it up a bit, and then converted to b&w. you can see my edit here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lilchelsi2001/IHeartFaces#5388005488405715474
ReplyDeleteCatharine was correct about the warming filter from PW. I opened it up in PS, and applied the warming filter and it looks beautiful! Unfortunately, the focus really can't be fixed. I tried sharpening the photo...and it just looks....sharpened. I tried using the eye pop from PW and it just looks like an out of focus photo I tried to put IN focus. :( I'm so sorry.
ReplyDeleteTry a higher apeture, or make sure your focal points are fixed on what you would like the camera to focus on before you push down the shutter. Also, if you can control the white balance with your camera, try adjusting the white balance for indoor/outdoor to help with the color. She sure is cute, doggonit! I have no doubt though, that you will be taking many beautiful photos of her!
What a cute picture! I have a suggestion that I don't know if it will work or not, but how about giving the whole picture a soft look? First sharpen the subject, then apply a gaussian blur to all of the background. Use an overlay filter to control the opacity. I have recently done something similar to a shot of mine that came out unfocused, but I wanted to save it.
ReplyDeleteShe is adorable :) First thing I noticed was the focus (as did you)...and probably no amount of sharpening will help. But to get her warmed up, you can do a Curves layer and choose the red channel and lift the midtones, and then choose the blue channel and do the opposite, bring down the blues...I think that Pioneer Woman has a very similar action. Thanks for sharing this with us, she's adorable :)
ReplyDeleteI think she is adorable! I can't offer you any feedback but I just wanted to say hi.
ReplyDeleteWhat can really help the overly blue tone on your picture is adjusting your white balance either in camera or in your RAW panel in CS4. If you are shooting in direct sunlight and your WB is set to sunlight, your camera will block some of the yellow tones the sunlight will cast in your picture, making it look normal. But if you're shooting in shade (which has a lot of blue and not a lot of yellow tones) and your WB is set to sunlight, then you are blocking any warm tones from your light source and therefore making your picture really blue. Set your WB to shade and it will warm your picture right up. If you can't remember to adjust your WB then set it to Auto-WB and then adjust your temperature setting in RAW when you're editing your photo. Slide the temperature slider toward the yellow and presto! Plus, editing your photo in RAW is less damaging to the quality of your images than throwing a filter right on top (unless you're using adjustment layers). The reason your picture is in focus on your back ground and out of focus on your daughter is probably because you are using Auto Focus. The little red dots that beep and flash when you push your shutter half way will show you exactly what the camera is focusing on. It looks like you were using a really shallow depth of field and then were focused on the background, which made your daughter blurry. Try selecting which little red dot you want to use and then making sure the area you want in focus is right on that dot, or try manual focus. It doesn't look like the blur was caused by motion, although 1/25 is a little bit of a slow shutter speed to shoot anything that can potentially move. If you can't choose a wider aperture and there isn't enough light to shoot faster than 1/25, you can adjust your ISO to a higher number (but keeping your ISO as low as possible will also help maintain quality). I hope this helps!
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