How to improve with photoshop on this photo..

what i wrote i since change the last pic

Edited by Debra - 29 November 2012 at 14:22

I played around before I saw your reply cindy.. yes, def agree get exposure right first, finding it very hard esp when using flash, but will get there in the end..

My main problem is his skin, he is not white, but looks tanned and I dont want to loose his colour but at the same time I do not want him to look yellowish..

I think you will still have to lower saturation a little after you get the skin balanced.

Just "threw" this through PaintShopPro auto-adjust and DeNoise. No dramatic changes.



And PSP's take on a b&w.



Edited by brettania - 29 November 2012 at 20:05

I see nothing much wrong with your No 2 (black and white) image. Exposure, tones and contrast all look good. In fact I like it a lot.

The colour image does seem a little underexposed and lacking in contrast and saturation, but this is nothing that a few tweaks in Photoshop, or better still ACR, can fix. Only you can know exactly what his skin colour should look like, but here's my quick attempt in Photoshop. With your knowledge of what he really looks like, I'm sure you can do better.



Levels adjustment Black point 23; Gamma 1.20; White point: 209
Hue/Saturation: Saturation +25
Colour balance (midtones) Cyan/Red +17 Yellow/Blue +17

As far as lighting is concerned, there is not a lot you can alter in post processing. This you really have to get right when taking the shot. To get a a less flat lighting effect, try using just one flash, off camera to one side. If necessary use a reflector on the other side of the subject to partially fill some of the shadows.

Here is what I got with my skin balancing method described above.

Looking at the Exif data in your photo, I see that you are using Manual exposure and manual white balance.

Manual exposure is fine -- in a studio situation it's really the best option -- but in this case I think you probably need to increase the exposure a bit by either opening up the aperture, increasing the flash power or just moving the flash a bit closer to the subject. Are you diffusing or bouncing the flash? - remember that light colored walls and ceilings will act as reflectors, particularly in a small space.

Actually, I suspect that the ambient light is playing a considerable part in the exposure of these photos. You are using a shutter speed of 1/20, which will allow a lot of the ambient light (daylight from a window?) to be recorded and if the flash is set to TTL or Auto it will be automatically quenched quite quickly and will act only as a fill. Try using a shutter speed of, say 1/125 sec, which will ensure that the flash dominates and will allow you to have more control over how your subject is lit. To reduce the amount of daylight in the exposure, you can probably just draw a curtain over the window.

And if you are relying on the flash for exposure, why use manual white balance? The simplest option is just to set the WB to 'Flash'. If any minor adjustment is needed that can be done in ACR. And as flash and daylight temperatures are more or less the same, this will also work if daylight is playing a part in the exposure.

It would help to know roughly what your set-up looks like -- a diagram of the layout, perhaps. Also what light sources are playing a part in the exposure and where they are relative to the subject.