First Beauty

Derek.Laurence

Derek.Laurence

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Name
Derek
Edit My Images
Yes
So I got a cheap studio kit for my Birthday.

This is my first attempt using it. I grabbed Kelsey fresh from playing on the street ( hence the scruffy hair) and banged out a quick butterfly lighting shot

DSC06203 copy2 by dereklaurence, on Flickr

The light (softbox) is about 3 ft in front of her, background is a black wall 6 feet behind., I put a grid on another light camera left behind her as a hair light.

PP I have done quite a lot. She had stray hairs everywhere ( I never had a brush to hand) and has a massive graze on the bridge of her nose so this was all healed out, as were the massive black bags she had under her eyes. Her eyes were sharpened (high pass) and brightened using a simple dodge and burn. I added a touch of colour to her lips as well.

I know that some will blast me for so much PP on one so young but this exercise was as much about developing some PP skills as it was about using the new lighting set up.

I would appreciate any C&C on where ive gone wrong ( I cant decide myself if ive oversharpened the eyes)
 
Derek, is your screen calibrated?
 
No its not. Its just a laptop screen and I dont have a calibration tool etc

Why? what are you seeing?
 
I think its turned out well. If you hadn't mentioned the amount of PP I never would have guessed. Even a closer look on the large image doesn't show any (to my eyes) very noticeable indicators. However, now that you mentioned the bags under the eyes, I think the skin under the right eye looks lighter and than the surrounding skin. Any time I have used the patch tool to do this in the past I have always been careful to go no more than about 50% to retain detail and keep it realistic.

Can you post the un PP'd version for comparison?
 
23rd man.... youve got me thinking....

My screen isnt calibrated, however, I haven't made any colour adjustments! Although I shoot RAW i edited this straight from the JPEG. As stated before, the only adjustments that ive done are healing, sharpening, an overlay brush for the lips, dodging and burning. Although the flickr exif data says the white balance is manual, Im positive it was set to flash in camera.

Given all this, surely an uncalibrated screen doesn't matter? I havent done a curves/levels adjustment or altered any colours to the whole image. Am i missing something?

Now that youve got me thinking I do think it looks a bit cold.
 
Derek.Laurence said:
No its not. Its just a laptop screen and I dont have a calibration tool etc

Why? what are you seeing?
Click to expand...

Your screen is much too bright because these are about half a stop underexposed.
 
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Lovely shot. Really liking the lighting there. Agree with Dean it looks dark, but easy to fix PP

Personally I would have left her eyes, just cloned out the graze.
 
Thank you! This actually explains a few things ( why my images are always dark when i get them printed etc lol)

I think my eyes must adjust to the darkness of the screen. Ive just edited a pic of the wife and once I did a levels adjustment the underexpose became apparent!
 
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