I'm in love

[MikeMc]

:redface:

Yep, she stole my heart with these eyes. This shot (cellphone) captures my buddies daughter..Stella as I cannot believe!!

I do not like my results with this image, I tried to de noise that face and just am not happy. I did increase the size in two 10% incements, and played a bit with those eyes.

If y'all want to tweak and play I would love that as I know more can be done...

 

[Tom Mann]

Hey, Mike - She's as cute as a button!

Question: Do you want to leave the purple-ish shadows as they are, or are you looking for a "best color" type of look?

Tom

 

[MikeMc]

Hey, Mike - She's as cute as a button!

Question: Do you want to leave the purple-ish shadows as they are, or are you looking for a "best color" type of look?

Tom

Yeppers one of the cutest I know

I thought the purplish cast was noise.... that is one of the issues I have...In the above I did my masking was real quick....I just cannot get the right overall color, the purple is from my buds phone I suspect

 

[ALB68]

Here's one with a few tweaks.

 

[MikeMc]

Did this one in Topaz.....alot of fun, Denoise worked well...no burning or dodging here

 

[ZipedX]

Had a go too.

Camera Raw+PS

[EDIT]

Still not color balanced I realise after posting...

 

[MikeMc]

I used all three (W< BK< GY ) balances in levels....this image drove me nuts

 

[ALB68]

Did this one in Topaz.....alot of fun, Denoise worked well...no burning or dodging here

View attachment 52587

Mike..IMHO this is wayyy overdone. I used Topaz as well but one called Djpeg which does about the same thing but just removed any artifacts. I honestly did not perceive much noise in the original. I removed that strand of hair across her forehead as I found it distracting, brightened up her eyes and sharpened. That's about it. I learned in the forum that subtle changes that don't jump out at you are best.

 

[ALB68]

Had a go too.

Camera Raw+PS
View attachment 52588
[EDIT]

Still not color balanced I realise after posting...

I was about to say..your skin color has too much yellow.

 

[MikeMc]

Mike..IMHO this is wayyy overdone. I used Topaz as well but one called Djpeg which does about the same thing but just removed any artifacts. I honestly did not perceive much noise in the original. I removed that strand of hair across her forehead as I found it distracting, brightened up her eyes and sharpened. That's about it. I learned in the forum that subtle changes that don't jump out at you are best.

I do agree , but then I don't.... I have always gone overboard with contrast, and sharpening....ME nothing more.

What I saw in this image was a flat boring set of big eyes...

As far as noise goes, I really don't always speak techno correctly, but in my psd, when I went to de noise the image, the whole picture came alive...

I used topaz 5 and didn't go all the way, but played until the cheeks and lips worked for me.


I do love all these inputs as it balances what I like and everyone else does !

 

[ALB68]

I do agree , but then I don't.... I have always gone overboard with contrast, and sharpening....ME nothing more.

What I saw in this image was a flat boring set of big eyes...

As far as noise goes, I really don't always speak techno correctly, but in my psd, when I went to de noise the image, the whole picture came alive...

I used topaz 5 and didn't go all the way, but played until the cheeks and lips worked for me.


I do love all these inputs as it balances what I like and everyone else does !

To each his own. If you like it or a paying client likes it, that's all that counts.

 

[chrisdesign]

I think the "best color look" applies to this image, as Tom mentioned in his post.
With curves I set the black point of the image. This eliminated the purple cast, but also made the skin tones to yellowish. I corrected this with color correction.
I selected the skin tones and put them on a new layer, applied a little Topaz Clean. I reduced the opacity to 80%.

 

[Parinaa]

My version

 

[Tom Mann]

One aspect of this photo that bothers me, but perhaps doesn't bother other people as much is the geometric distortion of the shape of her face caused by the camera being well above her. This is exactly the same problem I had with the selfie image discussed in this thread a few weeks ago:

https://www.photoshopgurus.com/foru...-my-photos-post1533702668.html#post1533702668.

As in that thread, the huge forehead and narrow and excessively pointy chin in the original annoys me terribly. In fact, ever since twin lens reflex cameras disappeared from the scene, and none of my good digital cameras have a tiltable LCD, I always bring a right angle optical finder if I'm going to be shooting kids. This allows me to get the camera down to their level without having to lay on the ground.

Anyway, although it's clearly impossible to correct for the wrong viewpoint in PS, one can make some changes to the overall shape of the face that somewhat help with the distortion. The only problem is that doing so chews into the edges of the photo (so you have to fake some background), and unless one spends a lot of time doing things like moving the mouth and eyes around after the overall outline of the face has been changed, one can introduce more problems than you are attempting to solve. Anyway, here is 10 min of work in that direction, mostly just to illustrate that in the original, her forehead was truly gigantic and her chin like a pin-point, LOL. I also couldn't resist a bit of dodging and burning to add some shadowing, add a bit of color to her cheeks, etc.

Anyway, here's my take on it.

Tom

PS - Mike, for Pete's sake, take your good camera over to your friend's house and shoot some nice pix of her before she grows up!

PPS - Are her eyes really that big?

 

[Tom Mann]

PS #3 - Yeah, I know that I should have filled out the lower right side of her face (as we are viewing it) even more that I did, but to be honest, I just didn't feel like doing any more work on this image. Sorry, Mike.

 

[MikeMc]

You hit it again Tom, These selfies with wide lenses really create som issues. I love how your ideas worked, and as far as great pictures, I will have to wait till may as They are 700 miles north of me, and I don't do cold weather.....

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Mike - I didn't realize your friends were so far away -- I thought it would be an easy re-shoot. In that case, late tonight, I'll work some more on this imiage and try to fix some off the problems I created by changing the overall shape of her face ( eg, chin out of line, eyes look crossed, make her chin more symmetric, etc.).

BTW you are absolutely right that in addition to the simple geometric (keystone) distortion caused by the position of the camera above the subject's head, additional, completely different problems are caused by the short focal length, wide angle lenses used on camera phones. For example, almost all these lenses have a good bit of barrel distortion, and their wide angle nature promotes being too close to the subject, emphasizing depth in the face. For example, you better not have a big schnozz and have someone hold a camera a foot or two away from your face in order to fill the frame.

Talk to you later.

Tom

 

[Steve]

I just saw this thread.
OMG what a beautiful little girl a what a great shot, even right out of the camera.

 

[RuidosoBill]

My feeble attempt, she is a real cutie for sure.



or

 

[Tom Mann]

Sorry, Mike - I must be getting old. I forgot completely about returning to this thread until I saw the most recent post in it. Anyway, in my last post, I mentioned that if one is going to attempt to reshape the outline of the face to fix the severe keystone distortion, one has to do things like make sure the nose, mouth, and bottom of the chin all are in a straight line, they are all relatively square with each other, etc. My previous post certainly didn't have this. This quick fix with puppet warp doesn't either, but at least it's a bit better than before and gives you the idea of what I had in mind.

Best regards,

Tom