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Please can i have feedback from this photo mainly regarding levels, Softness.
My wife says this image is to soft. I say this was to smooth the skin and remove blemishes etc but keep the hair and eyes sharp.
The colours dont look too bad on my monitor, my biggest gripe would be the picture is too big, trying to scroll around to get a decent view doesnt help
The colours dont look too bad on my monitor, my biggest gripe would be the picture is too big, trying to scroll around to get a decent view doesnt help
Mowgli
Sorry Mowgli about size of pic on my last post i was told off for showing photos to small. Maybe i have gone over the top and need to find some middle ground.
I can see what you are trying to do Phill, and its a technique often used in portraiture, esp with female models. Infact there is plenty of software around which makes the task easier. I did a review of some Kodak plugins last year, one of which, Digital Gem did just this.
I think in this case the cheeks are a little overdone, and I get the impression that makeup has been applied, which I'm sure it hasn't, just appears that way
I think this image can withstand some sharpening. It does have an over-smoothed feel about it...
The lighting is a little flat too, which will subdue sharpnes and detail. I had a look at the exif data and notice this is taken with the new Canon EOS-50D and with an 18-200 lens - at 200mm. Also it's virtually full aperture. So lens sharpness may not be at its best.
A lovely portrait but agree with your wife on softness though! With such a close up shot one would expect to see more detail in the skin, as in centre of forehead, where it seems not quite as soft & less pink! Blemishes can be removed with clone tool with a little patience & not affect the overall appearance too much!
This is an area of photography I was once very active, not so much this past two years.
The technique I use to soften skin tones is quite straight forward and very controllable.
Clone out obvious blemishes and adjust the usual contrast and colour adjustments you want.
Now duplicate the image onto another layer select Gaussian blur in Filters and blur the image, how much? well experiment, now reduce the transparency of the layer until the sharp background layer starts to show. Now with the erase brush set soft and at about 50% erase the blurred eyes gently to avoid hard edges, this will reveal the sharp background layer beneath, do the same with the lips and nostrils, also the hairline around forehead and ears. If the skin tone it still to plastic (it can if over blurred) simply reduce the blurred layer opacity a little more until a soft natural effect is seen. There is software about than can do all this but its cheaper to do this way.
I like the shot very much, perhaps a little over soft, but with the method described easily dealt with, I think I would have tried to get rid of that blue whatever it is in the background very distracting.
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