Need a jump start

[sydneysnana]

A friend took pictures at Syd's recital and now I need to fix a bit. Played with ACR, and Photo filters. I'd love some advice for the best method to tackle these....there's a bunch.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1BQVF7nZ8CbMAHSUAlLqD5mx7k3z_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1BQVF7nZ8CbMAHSUAlLqD5mx7k3z)

Michelle

[Jeff Perry]

Michelle, cute picture. Assuming Syd is the dancer in the middle, I would crop away the dancer on the right and leave a "square crop". You can also crop away the dancer on the left and leave you with a "portrait" crop. Either will be fine.

If you keep the dancer on the left, you could try a gaussian blur on only her half of the image to make her less prominent.

The red color cast from the the stage lights is a bit of challenge if you really want to get rid of it, I kind of like the effect of stage lights myself, so I wouldn't change it.

If you haven't tried to adjust the white balance, try that if there is any true white or gray in the image. I find the white balance tool (eyedropper) in Adobe Camera Raw works better than the one in Elements. It may help with the skin tones.

It looks like it was shot with available light, no flash (?), so zoom in close and check for noise, and de-noise if there is some there.

Jeff

[sydneysnana]

I played with a different pic. Did the white balance in ACR which I liked the the skin tones. So I layer masked with an orignal layer because I liked the other colors better. Then I used Noiseware, which is awsome....a little too soft maybe.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1KIt3gS69XdJFIiP5X4vYuQ47lC_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1KIt3gS69XdJFIiP5X4vYuQ47lC)


????

Michelle

[Jeff Perry]

Very nicely done!

How good are you at cloning?

If you intend to keep this criop, I would suggest you try to extend the area to the left of the dancer on the left, which means you will need to clone the left edge of her tutu with Syd's. I think it would help balance out the image a bit.

All in all, a very nice improvement.

Jeff

[Wendy]

Hi Michelle ...

I played around with this one ... added a new background and a few more bits.


http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1zCAPMja5i3elN7xcp4zZtYSEgTij1_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1zCAPMja5i3elN7xcp4zZtYSEgTij1)

Wendy

[sydneysnana]

Oh my Wendy!!! How did you do the background and lighting???
Michelle

[Wendy]

Hi Michelle ..

The background is just a gradient of two dark colours from the original image ... then with a soft brush I did a stroke all the way across the page before lowering the opacity of that layer.
Next I did another layer below that and using a bigger brush did a larger stroke, again all the way across the page and again reducing the opacity of that layer.

Because I was working on a small images the background looked OK but on a larger one you may need to add a little noise just to break up the solid colour.

For Syd I just did a correction using Hue & Saturation (on the individual channels) and fiddled about with it ...

Oh and I reconstructed the reflection.

I used the rectangular marquee to copy the rectangle to its own layer, it was a little dark at that stage so I duplicated that layer and changed the duplicate to screen. Lowered the opacity until it looked OK..


Wendy :)

[cats4jan]

Wendy - that is a wonderful job - but I'm tired just listening to the steps you took to "get there." :D

[Wendy]

... it actually sounds a lot more difficult when you read it than it actually was to do :D :D

Wendy