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What would u do different?


J

Jennifer Johanek

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Hello. I am new here. I'm glad I found you b/c I really need advice please.

Here is the image I am working with. The next is my edited version. I am taking out the people in the archway of the castle. I primarily used the patch tool to do this. Do you have any further recommendations to make it look any better? TIA! I truly appreciate it. I am blowing this up and want it to look the best it can.

Jennifer
 

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  • ORIGINAL.jpg
    ORIGINAL.jpg
    1.7 MB · Views: 5
  • EDITED.jpg
    EDITED.jpg
    1.7 MB · Views: 3
I would replace most of the people just using a brush, as there isn't much detail for you to clone, then remove the small amount of noise, then and contrast. Like this:-
View attachment 26542
Nice photo by the way!
 
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I think you've done a very good job as it is. Now, unless you want to find a castle door to add into the arch way, that will be another approach. But I feel what you have done, can't really be improved on.
 
TY both! I appreciate the input. Did you use a warming filter or action on the pic? I haven't tried one yet as I was just getting through the editing. It looks sharp!
 
To be honest, if I was shooting a family portrait, I would not have used something as "busy" as the castle as the background. With that sort of background, especially being so sharp and with the sun in their eyes, it's going to be almost impossible to get it to not look like a snapshot - nice, sharp and contrasty, but still a snapshot.

If I had to use the castle as the background, I would have done almost anything in my power to get the sun out of their eyes and behind them, ie, shoot at a different time of day, use a scrim, shoot from the other side of the castle, composite a better lit photo of them with a photo of the front of the castle, etc. I would also try to use a lower f-stop on my lens so that the DoF was more limited and the background went slightly soft.

If none of the above was in the cards, then, in post processing, I would try to lower the contrast, lower the saturation a bit, soften the shadows on the family, and draw the viewers' eyes to the family, not to the hyper-sharp background. I would also warm up the background and remove the overhead wires. Maybe something like this quick and dirty tweak. This version is much less flashy than the original, but, IMHO, in a direction starting to be a bit more appropriate for a family portrait.

If I had more time I would remove the people in the doorway (as discussed earlier), and I would also square up the castle walls a bit better (probably need to do this independently of the foreground subjects). I might even apply a painterly effect and print the image on canvas to distract away from the problems caused by the busy background.

Just my $0.02,

Tom

PS - Mods: On PSG.com, it seems that fairly awful artifacts are always introduced when a full rez submission is down-rezed for display. This is one of those images on which this is obvious. Is there any work-around or any other way to improve the displayed version?
 

Attachments

  • family_in_front_of_castle-01-acr-ps03a-01_full_rez.jpg
    family_in_front_of_castle-01-acr-ps03a-01_full_rez.jpg
    2.6 MB · Views: 7
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The more I look at it, the less I like the background, especially, the huge expanse of background. A crop of my tweaked version would make a reasonable family portrait, yet still give a strong suggestion of the castle.

T
 

Attachments

  • family_in_front_of_castle-01-acr-ps04b-keystone-cropped-600px_hi-01.jpg
    family_in_front_of_castle-01-acr-ps04b-keystone-cropped-600px_hi-01.jpg
    261.4 KB · Views: 23
TY for your reply and input. I agree with you on positioning and sun etc. This was a family vacation photo taken by one of the Disney PhotoPass people. I really didn't get a say in much else but "line the kids up and smile" :) I just got lucky and there wasn't a herd of people around me.........could you imagine that PS attempt, eeeks! Other people would probably be happy with the picture as it was. Seems like when you know PS and photography, you are a bit more picky ;) (that's me, haha)

Thanks again.
 
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