First portrait

[iansmart]

Tell me what you think. This is the girlfriend of a friend of mine who has just recorded a CD of her own music. She asked me to take some photos for her myspace page and this was one of them.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/gallery/data/500/thumbs/susan.jpg (http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=14534)

[Jimmy_Lemon]

I like the shallow DOF and colours seem good (maybe a little muted?) but looks sharp :) I bet she is happy with it! For a first time I think thats pretty damn good:thumbs:

[ron boon]

Lovely portrait - just needs opening up a little to bring light onto the face and sparkle to the eyes :clap: Here is a quick example if it helps

http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t4/ronboon/susan.jpg

[iansmart]

Thanks Jimmy and Ron. Ron can you explain what you did?

[ron boon]

Hi - essentially, a little crop, then resize. Then using the dodge tool set to about 10% for highlights I used a tiny brush to carefully open up the whites of the eyes. Then set the brush to very very large still at 10% but chaged to mids ( or shadow if very dark) so I could just very gently and light fingered lighten the face under the hat. Then overall tweak of levels to brighten the image pulling right side of curve to left) plus a 3 point tweak on saturation. Finally a very very small amount of softening. The image was incredibly good cause you took a superb photo which made the little tweaks easier to do as the image had the original quality :)

[moomike]

Excellent original image Ian, very nicely done - just needed a little bit of tweaking as in the softer effect of Rons edit :thumbs: