Ways to improve this picture needed, please.

[Daniel R.]

Hi All!

I hope this finds you all doing well and enjoying the Christmas and holiday season.

I took this shot but feel it needs a little more pop! Any suggestions on how to improve it? I have PSE3.

Many thanks!

Daniel

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v506/BossTime/IMG_3594.jpg

[Carbone]

Daniel,

I'm at work and don't have time to play with your picture, but a few things come to my mind :

- Lighten the subject just a tab
- Darken the surrounding a lot, and perhaps desaturating it a bit (removing a little colour, but not all).

This will make him the center of attraction even more.

You might consider removing the circular shape around his head (by means of the clone tool).

I am not an expert at this, so those are only personal suggestions.

Ray

[Daniel R.]

Thank you Ray! I'll give those methods a shot. The circular thing around his head is a basketball backboard. This was taken in a gym while the band was rehearsing.

Thank you for the quick reply! I appreciate it!

Have a great one!
Daniel

[TonyW]

The free virtual photographer plug-in is a good one to quickly look at some interesting variations. You can get it from

http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

I used it to convert to a "dramatic" black and white and then used a layer mask to paint back a bit of colour. Just one of many approaches :)

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/2893/pop14ds.th.jpg (http://img34.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pop14ds.jpg)

Tony

[Pauline]

Another thing that you might want to play around with is the much underused lighting effects filter! Highlight him and darken the background. Be creative and have his arm popping right out of the picture!

[Carbone]

Excellent idea Pauline!

Ray

[Daniel R.]

Thanks for the great suggestions everyone! I appreciate it!

And TonyW,

Funny you should mention the Virtual Photographer plug-in as I downloaded it earlier today after reading some other threads here!

Again, thank you!

Daniel

[Jodi Frye]

I see a touch or romance in this photo. The off guard shot of the desirable. Don't mind me...I tend to read too much into stuff when it comes to art and photography. I always find it difficult to think that it was just a snap shot and not meant to be anything more....I mean, from those who have a passion for creativity. Of course there are plenty who don't care and don't have much more than a camera phone ;)..not talkin' 'bout them ;)

[CarolLHB]

Here's my 2 cents...a subject near and dear to my heart because my son plays for his high school band:)

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/7504/noise5od.th.jpg (http://img236.imageshack.us/my.php?image=noise5od.jpg)

[Daniel R.]

Here's my 2 cents...a subject near and dear to my heart because my son plays for his high school band:)

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/7504/noise5od.th.jpg (http://img236.imageshack.us/my.php?image=noise5od.jpg)


Carol!

Nice job!! I am curious as to how you did that. I am just getting familiar with PSE3 and having a love/hate relationship with it. LOL LOL

Glad your son is in band. I think it's so important for our youth to partake in some form of creativity be it music, poetry, art, etc. The arts in general, seem to be going by the wayside and it's sad to see.

This is a shot of the conductor for the band my bride is a member of. She plays French Horn and has been at it for many years now and just loves it! I am the "Official Unofficial Photographer" for their band. I am always asked to get some shots for them so they can use them for advertising, public relations, etc.

Many thanks!
Daniel

[TonyW]

Carol: That's a great one. Well done.

Tony

[CarolLHB]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks-you are right about children and the arts-it's been a great experience for him. And what delight I get in seeing him grow as a person and a musician. And please...let's not even go there with the love hate thing and PSE!!:D

There are a couple of things going on here because I really wanted to highlight the conductor-so here goes...

First thing was to duplicate the background layer so nothing happens to the original. I made a selection around the conductor, put it on it's own layer and used Wendy's shadow tutorial on it
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3042&page=4

Back to the background layer copy-levels>hue-saturation-bring the sat all the way down to make the background b&w.

I put the black border by extending the canvas-image>resize>canvas by three quarters of an inch-black.

The skinny lines are done by using the rectangular marquee-putting a selection around the colored part of the image and do edit>stroke, the one around the conductor was 2px, inside, black and the other was 2px inside, gray.

The I added the text with a drop shadow (optional)

Hope this makes sense-my workflow is kind of all over the place when I'm fooling around!
:)

[Carbone]

Carol : 5 STARS !!!!

:)

Ray

[CarolLHB]

Ray-
that means a lot coming from you, my friend!:)

[Pauline]

Carol, excellent. I love the way that turned out and it gets rid of the distracting forground and background and puts the light on the subject. I never thought of doing something like that.