Another Self-Portrait Before/After..

[Jbknight3]

Hey there! Thought I'd try to edit my favorite self-portrait to date.

Please take a look at them! I'd love to hear some opinions!

Original:


Edited (Please click the image for actual color and quality.):


Tell me what you think!
-Jon

 

[ibclare]

After just a quick look since I have to get going, I'd say just one thing. It looks like you have made your skin rougher, noisier. Maybe it is oversharpened. I make layers smart objects so that I have a mask to reduce effects of filters. That way, there's no fussing around with inaccurate selections, feathering them and so forth. Was that your intent to texture the skin, or are my eyes off? (appointment with optometrist next week, says the blind visual artist)

 

[ArtofRetouching]

You have darkend the eye areas (forehead, sockets). these should be lightened, and so should the whiles of the eyes (ever so slightly). The flyaways are minor, but could be removed. I think what would help this image the best, is if you darkened the background, and (your) right shoulder. Those bright areas are pulling me away from your face. Also darker gradient up from the bottom a little. All of this will be the focus into your eyes.

 

[prd]

i think you are looking good in first one( original )

 

[Jbknight3]

Hey everyone! Thanks for all of the feedback! I took most of the advice and fixed the after picture into an After-After Picture.
Made a GIF of it:

(Edit start)
For some reason it's not animating until you click it soooo..
Click it or ticket.
(Edit end)
Any Better?
-Jon

 

[Tom Mann]

You have darkend the eye areas (forehead, sockets). these should be lightened, and so should the whiles of the eyes (ever so slightly). ... Those bright areas are pulling me away from your face. ...All of this will be the focus into your eyes.

Are u sure we aren't twins separated at birth? ;-)

In a previous recommendation to the OP, I said:
"...Unless I have a specific request or instructions, or am intentionally trying to achieve a gaunt, hollow-eyed look, my knee jerk reflex is to avoid deeply shadowed eyes..."; and,

"... As part of this, since your eyes were slightly OOF, I sharpened them as well as brightened them, removed some of the imperfections in the sclera ..."

"...on the importance of bright, sharp uber-penetrating eyes rather than the original softer eyes that are hidden by dark shadows. You know, "Windows to the soul", and all that. ;-) ..."

I thought u might get a chuckle out of that.

OTOH, I think the OP is trying to achieve drama in his selfies by PP means. In that same (earlier) post I recommended that he achieve this by better lighting rather than trying to approximate something vague like it after the fact in PP.

Cheers & welcome to the forum!

Tom

 

[Tom Mann]

@JBK - Before commenting on the overall look, we have to know your intent. From what you have said in the past, I get the idea that you want to add drama to your selfies, but I have no idea if you are really willing to do this by things like making such dramatic changes in the color of your hair, ie, moving away from reality, versus staying within the realm of a look that could have been achieved by purely photographic means.

Also, to add to the comments given above, just one additional technical observation: your skin tones are getting *awfully* saturated, even in the most recent version of this image.

T

 

[Jbknight3]

Hey Tom. Yes, I usually am aiming for a more dramatic look. I usually bump up the contrast and clarity(both in the RAW editor), and also give it that warm feeling, opposed to the cool blue tone I had in the original. As I'm sure you know, the clarity slider does make it more contrasty and sharp. To be honest, I am a huge fan of this guys work:
Lee Jeffries
He is mostly doing B&W images, but man they are cool.

Back to my picture as the topic, I forgot to save that most recent edit as a Jpeg or even PSD, so whenever I do feel like remaking it, I'll upload a Jpeg as well.

 

[Parinaa]

Hi, nice work.
the only thing I don't like very much about it, is your new hair color, it's just too yellow, I do not know whether this was intended or not but I think a color closer to your actual haircolor or a brown shade would be much better! you could also achieve the dramatic look with a more natural hair color.

 

[ibclare]

In my opinion, part of the issue around the shading of the eyes is of course the angle of your head and the bright light. When you remove all the shadow from under the eyes and leave so much still under the forehead hair and the eyelids, this doesn't look natural to me. If you did a more global reduction of shadow in this area, there would appear to be more reflected light which would reduce darkness in the region, not just below the eyes. I think John Ross (Art of Retouching) said that above if in different words.

 

[Crotale]

I agree with Tom. Desat that color...a lot. Well, not all the way, but maybe around half for starters. As of now, your color over-saturation is drowning out the lighting and texture contrasts. It makes for a very uninteresting picture in my book.

 

[Tom Mann]

Try this for size . Knowing u like a more dramatic look, I left your skin in this version more saturated, contrasty, and a bit darker than I usually would, but obviously, since we have never met, I'm still guessing at your actual skin and hair color and brightness..

FWIW, I still *strongly* suggest some simple lighting changes / improvements before you turn to PS. For example, (1) have a friend hold a big piece ( several feet on a side) of foam core (or even a white sheet held by two friends) under the camera, pointed up at your face to reduce the sunken-eyes look; (2) HOld a tall piece of foam core vertically to one side of you and aim a strobe at it (aim for about head height). Set the intensity so it's a stop or 2 under your main ambient exposure. This will give some natural looking L-R contrast to your face without the excessive shadowing and bright patches.

Cheers,

T

 

[Tom Mann]

And since you mentioned that you like looks like this:
http://500px.com/photo/32790995

Once your image was in a fairly standard form (ie, with a reasonable distribution of brightness over the face), it only took a minute or two more to get it headed towards full Draganazation. With more time, one could easily tweak it to more closely reproduce the look of the images you like.

T

 

[ArtofRetouching]

I only spent like 10 minutes on this, so dont over think it, but this is what I had in mind. Remove the sunken eyes, darken the hair, left and bottom. I also wrapped the front of the vest, around the back (left side). Now you are looking where I want you to look. FYI - I did 95% in Camera Raw. The hair shadow could still be lightened more, but you get the idea.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hey, ArtOf, something odd is going on with color profiles in the image you just posted.

Using Firefox (latest, all color management on) on a PC, the skin color of the forum-generated preview is considerably darker and more saturated than what I see if I double click on the preview for your tweaked version and view the file up actually uploaded (ie, at full rez), or if I save it the file u uploaded and then view it in PS. See image attached immediately below for how I presume you would like your image to appear as a preview.




I believe I know what's going on: When I view the metadata for your full rez tweaked image using either EXIFtool or PhotoME, they give the color space as "uncalibrated'. In contrast, Jon's original and my tweaked version are both sRGB and, as expected the colors change only imperceptibly when going between the preview and the full rez versions.

Bottom line, I suspect that the forum software doesn't know what to do with "uncalibrated" uploads, so you may want to consider exporting any work destined for this forum specifically tagged to be sRGB and embed the profile (for belt-AND-suspenders certainty).

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

PS - @ArtOf: I agree that the OP's image looks better with the top of his hair darkened and the stripes on his vest extended. Good call. Also, assuming my previous post about color spaces is correct, it's reassuring to see how similar we independently made the skin and eyes. Not knowing the OP's true skin color, I moved the red hues slightly towards the orange, but I could easily be persuaded otherwise.

Obviously, I favor a head-and-shoulders crop and felt like I had to do something with that dismal gray sky in the background.

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

@Jon - One more suggestion: When you are shooting a shot like this, tell the model (or yourself) to stretch their neck out and straight up, not forward. Without that posing suggestion from the photographer, many people tend to move their head forwards, towards the camera, giving a bit of a vulture-like appearance. Don't worry, you have only the slightest trace of it. LOL!

T

 

[ibclare]

Very interesting discussion. I like both versions, or is it 4? Getting confused here. Tom, when I view AofR's image on the forum at full size, not sure if that's the viewing you refer to or on your own monitor, it does not look much different contrast or exposure-wise to me. Anyway, I'm impressed by both renderings.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Clare - Here's an animated GIF that shows the difference between (a) the preview generated by the forum software, and (b) a version of the same size that I generated starting from ArtOf's original jpg upload of his tweaked version. In (b) I made absolutely sure that no additional efx or any other changes were made to his image other than down-rez'ing it to be the same size as the in-line preview frame.

The differences you see on the animated GIF should be exactly what I see on my monitor.

T

 

[ibclare]

Got it. I didn't read carefully I guess, or didn't understand. Took off my squintacles (glasses for squints, lol . . . which make me more intelligent? or not) and thought you just meant when you enlarge it on forum by clicking (several times). Thanks for the clarification.