Hello I was hoping for some advice on this image. I love this photo, I love her pose and the soft creamy feel. But I feel like it needs some pop and it could be a really good image. I am brand new to photoshop- I downloaded it yesterday lol but I am really excited to learn and take my photos to the next level. Anybody have anything they think would help? Also- I see her shorts showing I know I need to clone that out when I figure out how to do that ha ha.
I would google some photoshop actions. Look at images that are similar to this and download those actions. There are 1,000's of free actions to use in photoshop. Another thought would be to duplicate the layer then select multiply in the layer style. Adjust the opacity to suit. Darkening the sun a little so it is not so round ad white (maybe a clone of the other parts of the background over that too. Clone the shorts by bringing down the front of the dress just a touch but don't forget to put back in the grass...or take it out altogether.
Youtube has a large number of video tutorials you can watch to learn photoshop. There is also photoshop classroom in a book. I basically learned photoshop by seeing something I wanted to do then looking for a tutorial on it. Good luck!!!
What a cutie!! I really like her placement, but I may change the crop a bit so her feet are in the shot. I would love to see this in B&W. There is a good contrast between her and the back ground so she would really stand out. GREAT shot!
What a gorgeous pose and such a beautiful young lady.
As for the shot, and I think you did ask for critique, for my taste there is too much going on in the frame. My eye is not drawn immediately to the girl, but to the blown highlight of the sun. Next it's to the post and then finally to the figure. The focus on the face and the eyes especially leads me to believe you must have wanted this as the main subject.
Here's what I would do with it assuming the figure is the subject you want. Crop it down, spot heal the blown sun highlights that remain, make the post vertical, and tone down(up?) the tones and the post textures so as not to compete for attention with the figure. But I do like the post in the tighter crop, somewhat mirroring the pose of the girl. I like the overall tones of what remains and did almost nothing with them, just widened out the gamut some. Adjusted the sharpening a little to further highlight the face and that brilliant dress. All was actually done in Camera Raw and of course all I had was a small piece of the view large jpeg so it is a little rough, but I hope you get the idea. Good luck with Ps. https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hhvc5ae9y3123t/Young%20Lady.jpg
A lot of the time when I'm editing photos in photoshop I will play around with the curves and photo filters. They can really help it pop. Also, I'm a huge fan of contrast so I usually bump that up a bit. What I would recommend is just playing around with the different tools available until the photo is really pleasing to you. Using adjustment layers instead of directly adjusting the image can be very helpful because you can simply delete the layer if you don't like it instead of having to step backwards or start over.
Hi Megan, Now I don't use photoshop so can not really advise; I can however tell you how easy ribbet is. You can clone very easily in there by going to there pro section (you do need to register for this but no cost) and then you could go into effect and use boost; I do find it a bit in your face and tend to take it down to 20/30% but it can lift a shot. This is a darling of a shot, you should have fun just playing. Another thing ribbet does it save the amend shot back to your pc as a different shot, so you will never lose the original and can keep amending differently.
Hi, this will be my first post. I love the image. Composition is really nice and I didn't even notice her shorts peeking out until I read your comment. As to PS, I'd like to see some more warmth. genniejphotography has some wonderful free actions as does pioneerwoman.
Meagan, you're getting lots of advise, all good. The few things I would look at include:
1) Always start with making a duplicate layer of the original when you open PS.
2) Don't fight the golden sun glare, this is difficult and requires a lot of PS experience. I'd look at taking advantage of it by adding a slight golden filter to make the photo warmer. If the sun area gets "too" warm you can mask that area out with a slight (5-8%) masking brush.
3) Use the clone tool to eliminate her shorts and the tall blade of grass coming up her right leg - to me this is distracting and can be taken out.
4) You can also try a focusing effect and keep her sharp and crisp and slightly blur the rest of the image. Again, this can be done with another layer, a Gaussian blur or focus filter and masking.
5) Adding a texture can also dramatically impact the photo and can be used to bring "pop" to her.
6) As @aprilmilani mentioned, if you have the feet/boots in the picture it would be good, but if not.....
I know for someone new to PS the above might be a bit difficult, but everyone starts somewhere and PS is a rather complicated piece of software with lots and lots of tools, filters, actions, brushes and much more. Have fun learning and experimenting!
@frankhymus hey thank you sooo much!! I wouldn't have thought to make it a tighter crop- and by doing that I can get her shoes in the pic as well. The reason they aren't in the frame is because I had to straighten the image a bit apparently I shoot sideways lol!
Thank you so much for your help I'm excited to try and master again :)
@yoursunshinegirl I would love more warmth too! When I tried to add more it would turn yellow/orangeish dangit! Perhaps I can try warm then contrast then soften to get it. Thank you very much! Do you have a link to pioneer woman? Would love to see it!
@k1w1 thank you Claire! I will have to play around with it. That's great I want to do dome tutorials but wanted to get familiar with it first before I watched them. I'm glad there are a lot out there I'm excited to play with it all. Thank you so much!
@aprilmilani thank you April! About the shoes- I was so bummed I had to straighten the image and that cut them off :( but someone mentioned a tighter crop which if I did that I would be able to get her shoes in! And I didn't think black and white with this image but I can't wait to try it. I love black and whites. Thank you so much!!
@ryanarra2 I had no idea you could delete some of the layers- that would have saved me hours last night lol!! Thank you- I've heard playing with curves is great I haven't tried it yet- so I will now :) sometimes when I push up contrast it dulls my other colors..? Have you had that? I would like it to be rich and creamy but perhaps that's not easy to do lol thank you so much for taking the time to cc!
@claireuk thank you so much Claire! I will have to try ribbet I don't think I've heard about that yet and I love that it keeps an original that's so helpful! Thank you so much!
Well Meagan I can't figure out how to post the link to Pioneer Woman's free actions, so if you just google Pioneer Woman free actions it will get you there.
@meagang Before you get totally frustrated with learning all the ins and outs of big Photoshop (there is wonderful stuff there, a huge amount, but it's not trivial) why not start with the Adobe Camera Raw plugin if what you are after are tonal adjustments and the more common corrections? It's actually also available as a filter from the Filter Menu on Ps. That is if you have PsCC and Camera Raw 8.3. Ps CS5/CS6 will support ACR 7 I believe. ACR also forms the core of Lightroom's Develop module (actually it is the module with a more nifty cosmetic UI) if you have that as well.
ACR is slider driven, and indeed parts of it, like Highlight/Shadow Recovery and all of the Basic Panel, the Detail Panel (Noise and Sharpening) and everything lurking in the Lens Correction Panel, can even lay claim to have better technology than big Ps. The words of Mr. Photoshop himself, Scott Kelby, not mine. Yes, for lots of masking and local adjustments and such ACR is a bit of a pig, but only if you push it hard. Its clone capability is certainly basic, but gets the job done for many common situations. But ACR is so much easier to operate and navigate, and much more learner-friendly than big Ps.
@mikegifford Thank you solo much for so much great advice! I'm excited to try everything and learn. I played with it a bit tonight.. looks better I think but not quite there yet! Thank you so much for taking the time to cc!! I really appreciate it!
@frankhymus That's great, I've been using the IPhoto editing with the sharpening, contrast, denies etc.. for a while now, was hoping to learn how to play with actions, presets, and expand a bit. There's only so much you can do, and I feel like my photos could be better if I could take them to another level. But it's definitely a learning experience and I know it's a very complicated program. So I will definitely be taking my time :) Thank you so much for your help today! I will have to check that one out, maybe a better step instead of diving into photoshop :)
@meagang Camera Raw is an integral part of Ps being the Adobe raw converter, so you should have it. You can invoke it directly from Bridge - right click on the image (jpeg even) you want to edit and choose Open in Camera Raw. Or from Ps with an image loaded, select Filter | Camera Raw. If you need it upgraded just go to Help | Updates... What versions of Ps do you have?
@frankhymus oh!!!!!! I saw the bridge but had no idea what it did. This might be a stupid question but I shoot in raw so would that automatically come up or is it for converting pics to raw if they aren't? Don't judge me I told you I was new! Ha jk :) thank you!! My internet on my computer isn't working at the moment but I did a couple others and going back and forth to this photo. I will post it later if you don't mind looking..? Anyway thank you!!
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Youtube has a large number of video tutorials you can watch to learn photoshop. There is also photoshop classroom in a book. I basically learned photoshop by seeing something I wanted to do then looking for a tutorial on it. Good luck!!!
As for the shot, and I think you did ask for critique, for my taste there is too much going on in the frame. My eye is not drawn immediately to the girl, but to the blown highlight of the sun. Next it's to the post and then finally to the figure. The focus on the face and the eyes especially leads me to believe you must have wanted this as the main subject.
Here's what I would do with it assuming the figure is the subject you want. Crop it down, spot heal the blown sun highlights that remain, make the post vertical, and tone down(up?) the tones and the post textures so as not to compete for attention with the figure. But I do like the post in the tighter crop, somewhat mirroring the pose of the girl. I like the overall tones of what remains and did almost nothing with them, just widened out the gamut some. Adjusted the sharpening a little to further highlight the face and that brilliant dress. All was actually done in Camera Raw and of course all I had was a small piece of the view large jpeg so it is a little rough, but I hope you get the idea. Good luck with Ps.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hhvc5ae9y3123t/Young%20Lady.jpg
1) Always start with making a duplicate layer of the original when you open PS.
2) Don't fight the golden sun glare, this is difficult and requires a lot of PS experience. I'd look at taking advantage of it by adding a slight golden filter to make the photo warmer. If the sun area gets "too" warm you can mask that area out with a slight (5-8%) masking brush.
3) Use the clone tool to eliminate her shorts and the tall blade of grass coming up her right leg - to me this is distracting and can be taken out.
4) You can also try a focusing effect and keep her sharp and crisp and slightly blur the rest of the image. Again, this can be done with another layer, a Gaussian blur or focus filter and masking.
5) Adding a texture can also dramatically impact the photo and can be used to bring "pop" to her.
6) As @aprilmilani mentioned, if you have the feet/boots in the picture it would be good, but if not.....
I know for someone new to PS the above might be a bit difficult, but everyone starts somewhere and PS is a rather complicated piece of software with lots and lots of tools, filters, actions, brushes and much more. Have fun learning and experimenting!
Thank you so much for your help I'm excited to try and master again :)
I really like what you did with the image. Neither her missing feet nor the post bothers me anymore. I love the colors as well.
ACR is slider driven, and indeed parts of it, like Highlight/Shadow Recovery and all of the Basic Panel, the Detail Panel (Noise and Sharpening) and everything lurking in the Lens Correction Panel, can even lay claim to have better technology than big Ps. The words of Mr. Photoshop himself, Scott Kelby, not mine. Yes, for lots of masking and local adjustments and such ACR is a bit of a pig, but only if you push it hard. Its clone capability is certainly basic, but gets the job done for many common situations. But ACR is so much easier to operate and navigate, and much more learner-friendly than big Ps.