How could I improve on this with editing?

[Memorymaker]

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c30/Nic117/Freya.jpg

I like it but know it needs something else, I'm still learning and so any tips would be greatly appreciated.

MM

[Shane]

for me it lacks contrast.

[kmlc]

Maybe a tighter crop, to the right, and possibly more contrast?

[Memorymaker]

Thanks....

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c30/Nic117/f1.jpg

Better?

[kmlc]

yay!! that is alot easier to look at now, more impact :)
Can i have a go too please, if you dont mind?

[Memorymaker]

yeah i dont mind - in fact I'd appreciate it, lol

mm

[Ted]

let me know what you think of this and i'll tell you what I did if you like it. I realise that the crop has reduced the image quality significantly but similar edits made on the original should come out fine.

This is a really rough effort (eg eyes need to be done more carefully) but Gives you an idea anyway

edit: looking at it again, I would take even more off the bottom so that the eyes lie on the line of the top third

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/gallery/data/500/edit21.jpg

[kmlc]

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/gallery/data/1515/Freya.jpg

Here is my edit...

What ya think?

[Ted]

you win, ha! If you sold a tutorial on how to do that Kmlc, I would buy it. Very impressive

[kmlc]

I dont know actually Ted, yours is funky colorful, i like it :)

[Memorymaker]

Wow.

I like both edits, but kmlc, I'd buy that tutorial too!!

I love it - thanks a lot.

Could both of you let me know what you did?

MM

[Ted]

what editing software do you have MM?

[kmlc]

Thanks very much :) you made my night :)
Same question MM

[Memorymaker]

Photoshop 7.0

Just getting to grips with it all really.

I'm really pleased with that edit, could have put it in this months contest if I'd known how to do it myself, lol. Its lovely.

Thanks

[DinoS]

What did you do to it KLMC?

[kmlc]

:)
Ok, all i did was crop the photo tight, made use of the light from the top left, and 'dodged' her eyes a tad, to bring out the reflection in them. (the dodge tool can be found with the burn and sponge tool)

I then converted it to black and white using the gradient map. (Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map - make sure your colour paletter is black as foreground and white as background)

Then i added a photo filter - sepia, to it, this was set at about 20%

Then i used the burn tool around her eyes a tad, and also the eyebrows a bit. Not too much though, just a smidgen'

To remove some of the burnout caused by the light, i added a vignette, done so via Lens Correction: Filter>Distort>Lens Correction. The amount of vignette was set at -100 and the midpoint was set at +40

And finally applied the unsharp mask - amount: 22%; radius: 1 pixels and threshold set at 0 pixles.


Bish bash bosh.

:)

ps: i use cs2, so not sure about your settings, some may differ slightly??!?!

[DinoS]

Thanks KLMC

[Memorymaker]

Thanks a lot, I'm going to take note and play around see if I can recreate it, lol.

Thats what I love about this forum, its active learning through sharing.

Thanks again ;)

[Ted]

Thanks. I can go to bed an educated man.

[kmlc]

:) pleasure! I know, i love this forum. I am actually an addict now. hehehe
What did you do Ted?

[purpleclouds]

KMLC for the win!! awesome edit :)

[Ted]

Other than the crop and cloning out the white blown area top left, I just selectively sharpened and increased the saturation of the eyes. A bit OTT in this case I know, but am still at the experimenting stage. This isnt a good example cos I didnt resharpen after cropping, but I find that decomposing the selected eyes to LAB and then sharpeing just the L channel gets the best results. Then recomposing. I'm using GIMP so probably not much use explaining where my settings are.

I had a crack at getting dodging the eys the way you suggested kmlc but couldnt get the highlights you managed to pull out of it. What was your dodger set to and did you dodge the whole eye or just the highlights? Sorry, very new to this as well and would love to be able to recover eyes on demand.

[kmlc]

I use dodge very lightly here, it is set to midtones, and around 45% exposure. I kinda just went over the already highlighted areas on the eyes.. the trick is not to over do it, and make sure u use a fairly soft brush.

[walls]

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/sllaw/baby.jpg

i don't think you'll ever get a decent enlargement out of this, but at least a little memory perhaps

[ryanuk]

walls i like that one!

[Yv]

Difficult to demonstrate much on the small versions we have here, but I would crop in tighter to eliminate some of the blown top corner and excess background stuff on right, then go for a much 'higher key' look. Cant do much about sharpening it on this size image, but this just to give you an idea, it would work much better on full res original.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/gallery/data/1673/Freyaedit.jpg

[Ajophotog]

Here my take, I made a couple of copies and used a gaussian blur and set the opacity to suit. I used a couple of masks one for face details and the other to soften the outside of the image and I also cloned the right eye to the left OOF eye too then gave the whole shot a sepia feel. Hope you like.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2286/2405435240_9684db3f71_o.jpg

[SiNoO]

nice editing guys