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Sepia Toning


F

Frey

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I just started my photography class and our first assignment is to take pictures of something dilapidated and add our own sepia tone to them. I plan on going out and taking some pictures of a local graveyard. In the meantime I have been practicing with sepia tone on various pictures. Here is a before and after of my son. What does everyone think? I did these in photoshop.

Before:

Pics2 024.JPG

After:

sepianugget.jpg
 
I like the textures the sepia brought out in the bricks and grass on the School picture.
 
Hey there, glad to see you're in a class. My thoughts on the baby are that the range of colors gives depth to the picture. Now that it is sepia-toned, it looks flatter, so it will need some contrast or levels type adjustments made. Here is something I did:

FreysBabe.jpg

I did a levels adjustment layer and a contrast adjustment layer. Then I made a layer above those, painted a few facial highlights with a soft low opacity white brush and set the blend mode to soft light. Finally I applied a warming filter, then a hue/sat to get it more sepia. I redid the image without the warming filter, only the hue/sat. Just some ideas for you.
 
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The tone looks off on the baby image.... there are a lot of ways to do it depending on your image and on one's preference..

sepia.jpg

Try adding those adjustment layers and play with the settings to suit your liking.......

For this, I brightened up the baby image before adding adjustment.
 
Thanks for all the feedback guys. I think the reason the school picture turned out better is because the baby picture was taken with a sony bloggie video camera and the school picture was taken with a Nikon S3300. I hope to go out and take some pictures today for my class project.
 
I got out to the graveyard today and have about 10 pictures I am working with. I have already began working on 4 of them. If anyon has some advice Id love to hear it. Here are the first 4.

sepiagraveyard1.jpg

sepiagraveyard2.jpg

sepiagraveyard3.jpg

sepiagraveyard4.jpg
 
feedback on what exactly the photography aspect or the pp.

my opinion is on the photography side the images do nothing for me and look like they have been taken on a low pixel camera phone. The focus appears to be wrong and appears to be no thought into composition. The images are crooked and does not add anything to your shots this style only works with certain images.


The post production

I feel Sepia toning should be just that toning not drowning out the image and looking like it is a photo in a bowl of coffee tone it down or use the sepia action in the standard actions window or add a black and white adjustment layer and click the sepia tone box and work from there.

Once you are happy with the groundwork then go into the colour and contrast correction maybe even add a bit of HDR to sharpen them slightly. But dont over work it.
 
OK, I will add my feedback. I am not being gentle, just honest in what is my opinion. I was not going to reply at all. But as you have repeated your request that someone does . . .

I agree with hoogle. Your shots are boring, crooked, badly exposed, and ill-composed.

The composition on all of these shots is remarkably poor. You are too tight up on the subjects for you to be able to frame them or take them in. If, as in the last picture, there is no space between the top and the bottom of the photo and the subject, then the eye will be roving continuously trying to find a focal point. There is none here.

In the first photo, you have made a similar mistake, you are still too tight and it makes the viewer want to back up for a better view. And in this case, you have cut off the bottom of your subjects. Everything is out of focus and you need to understand the Golden Ratio or Rule of Thirds. This is the only shot which isn't askew.

As for the two architecture shots, it is impossible to tell what you are wanting us to see. Again no focal point. You need to either pull back or get in close. What are we looking at? Not only that, but architectural photography isn't easy for non-professionals to correct for the angles. Unless you use the angles to accentuate a shot, the crookedness just plain looks wrong.

For all this kind of still photography, you need to use a tripod. It will help you to view and compose better and straighten your shots.

And in PP you gave them "sepia tones," but every tone is different from the last. You need to have consistency. And if you want to make a variance, do it as version 2, 3, etc. of one shot, so that it appears you know what you are doing.

I have suggested to you before and I will bring it up again. I recommend you get training, such as you can get in a community college, in design, color theory, and survey classes in art and photography. I believe these are a foundation for anything else you wish to create in the visual media.

You have the desire and the enthusiasm, but you lack the training and experience. Do you have the talent? That I don't know. These photos are no indication.
 
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