Monochrome Portrait Porcessing

[batjko]

I'm quite proud of this one. The original is not mine, it was shot by a Russian friend in some waiting room, I believe.



Obviously, such impressive facial features and lines were perfect for a Lee Jeffries' kind of interpretation, which I am a big fan of.

What do you think... good, bad?

 

[Paul]

Ok, the blacks are lost a little maybe

 

[chrisdesign]

The original shot is just perfect. You gave it a good try to improve it, but I think some of the personality of the old woman got lost, because you worked too much on her eye.

 

[batjko]

Hm, interesting.
I can't say I see what you mean, chris. Do you mean you would have preferred to leave her eyes dark?

Paul, yea I suppose one or two of the darker spots have lost too much detail. Thanks for the tip, I didn't really notice that.

 

[chrisdesign]

Hm, interesting.
I can't say I see what you mean, chris. Do you mean you would have preferred to leave her eyes dark?

Paul, yea I suppose one or two of the darker spots have lost too much detail. Thanks for the tip, I didn't really notice that.

this part is a little overdone.

 

[Tom Mann]

I have no problems with how you processed the image to B&W. IMHO, if that's what you set out to do, you displayed good craftsmanship, as did the photographer. If you set out to emulate Lee Jeffries work, from what I remember, he tends to crop much more closely and many (most) of his street people subjects are looking straight at the camera, not away from it.

That being said, there is a lot of subjectivity and opinion involved in the basic decisions to (a) take such a photo; and (b) convert it to B&W vs. leaving it in color.

Although I don't know the relationship of the photographer to the sitter or the circumstances of the shot (eg, was it a shot of the photographer's grandmother or a street shot of a homeless woman), many photographers and critics feel that photos of old wrinkled folks can easily fall into stereotyping the subject, perhaps, even to the point of degrading / exploiting them. In addition, many would argue that these types of photos are "easy shots" taken by less experienced photographers who, for their own betterment, want to emulate well known photographers who actually are socially conscious.

In addition, conversion to a B&W with exaggerated local contrast (to exaggerate the old weathered / wrinkled look) is, IMHO, a cliche at this point. It's been overused. Every kid with a camera that thinks he's a street photographer knows how to light a subject and process the resulting file to get this look.

So, my opinion, and it's just my opinion, is a lot like Chris' -- leave it a straightforward color shot. This will impose less of your own likes and dislikes on it, and leave more of the interpretation (eg, grandma or street person) ambiguous and in the minds of the viewers.

If it were mine, about the only things I would do would be to crop more closely, goose up the colors a bit, and put a bit more light on the eyes (It's almost impossible to go wrong by doing this in a portrait).

Just my $0.02,

Tom

 

[batjko]

this part is a little overdone.

Yes I figured that's what you meant. I suppose the idea was to stylize it as bit more than a standard b&w edit would, and so going slightly stronger on the eyes was part of that overall look I was going for.
But of course, that depends on the purpose of your edit. In my case, it was simply practice.

I have no problems with how you processed the image to B&W. IMHO, if that's what you set out to do, you displayed good craftsmanship, as did the photographer. If you set out to emulate Lee Jeffries work, from what I remember, he tends to crop much more closely and many (most) of his street people subjects are looking straight at the camera, not away from it.

Ah yes, but it wasn't shot with the post-processing in mind, that was just my interpretation and I was more interested in just practicing the different ways of working with the light in PS, rather than achieving a close-as-possible emulation of JF's work. It's just whenever I do some B&W I immediately have his stuff in front of my inner eye...

That being said, there is a lot of subjectivity and opinion involved in the basic decisions to (a) take such a photo; and (b) convert it to B&W vs. leaving it in color.

Although I don't know the relationship of the photographer to the sitter or the circumstances of the shot (eg, was it a shot of the photographer's grandmother or a street shot of a homeless woman), many photographers and critics feel that photos of old wrinkled folks can easily fall into stereotyping the subject, perhaps, even to the point of degrading / exploiting them. In addition, many would argue that these types of photos are "easy shots" taken by less experienced photographers who, for their own betterment, want to emulate well known photographers who actually are socially conscious.

Granted. And again, my interpretation is not meant to support any agenda or social point, nor is it used commercially or for any other purpose than as a conducive subject for practicing my processing techniques.

In addition, conversion to a B&W with exaggerated local contrast (to exaggerate the old weathered / wrinkled look) is, IMHO, a cliche at this point. It's been overused. Every kid with a camera that thinks he's a street photographer knows how to light a subject and process the resulting file to get this look.

That surprises me a little. I have seen a few people do this, but not many, certainly not "[e]very kid with a camera that thinks he's a street photographer". In my experience they tend to focus on very different styles, especially when it comes to street photography, where it's not the local contrast they are after but the overall exposures in the wider scene.

But yea, I suppose Jeffries' look specifically has gotten popular very fast. That doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't use it when it helps us learn, or in order to explore various styles and techniques to find our own styles.
Again, not trying to ride a gravy train here, just practicing, learning.

If it were mine, about the only things I would do would be to crop more closely, goose up the colors a bit, and put a bit more light on the eyes (It's almost impossible to go wrong by doing this in a portrait).

I can see how the closer crop works as well. I particularly liked some empty space in front of her (The original photo's crop was also mine).
Not so sure about your colors, though. For my own taste a little too much green and yellow. But it's a different interpretation which would probably serve different purposes quite well.


Thanks for the feedback guys.

 

[batjko]

Alright, guys... how about a subject/object that is less... controversial.

Same processing techniques, just a different original image which needed saving from the bad under-exposure.

Although, of course the distance to the subject required slightly different dodge&burning.
Also, the original is pretty unsharp if you zoom in, couldn't do much about that :/

Thoughts on this one, Paul, Chris?

 

[Tom Mann]

re: "...I have seen a few people do this, but not many, certainly not '[e]very kid with a camera that thinks he's a street photographer'...."

OK, I'll grant you that in my enthusiasm I probably overstated the situation a bit, LOL, but don't forget that essentially the same look also goes under the name "Dragan Effect". Google that term and you get over 800,000 hits (for both B&W and color variants). Around here, it's also sometimes referred to as "The Topaz Effect" even though that is incorrect because there is no single look or single product from Topaz.

re: "...For my own taste a little too much green and yellow...."

It's no big deal, but to be honest, I don't understand how you possibly could be seeing greens and yellows in my tweaked version. When I use the eyedropper tool to get the average color of large expanses of skin, the hue of the skin of the subject always comes out between about 38 and 42 degrees. For reference, red is 0 degrees, and yellow is 60 degrees (in these units), so the hue of her skin clearly is nowhere near green, and is much more like orange than yellow.

That being said, in retrospect, I think I increased the saturation and brightness more than necessary.

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Tom Mann]

WRT your work on the image of the young man with glasses, although your version is likely to be quite acceptable to many people, my personal opinion is that one shouldn't 't ever:

a) remove almost all reflections from someone's eyeglasses -- it now looks like he is wearing fake glasses, ie just a frame with no lenses. It's kinda like removing all catchlights from eyes -- it looks weird; and,

b) lower the contrast in the shadow areas so much. To me, after your changes , it's almost looking like that side of his face was lit by a (diffuse) source well below the level of the camera. (Aka, "monster lighting").

my guess is that if u blend back in about half of the original, it will look just about perfect .

Just my $0.02,

Tom

 

[chrisdesign]

I agree with Tom's comment, and here is my version of a B+W image.

 

[batjko]

Good point on the glass reflections, I wasn't sure about it at first, and then was just happy I was able to get rid of the reflection at all. Didn't even occur to me to keep some of it in.

It took me quite a lot to get the shaded side of the face filled in without it looking too artificial. I did want that side facing the camera to stand out from the background, precisely as if it was lighted better from the front.
That part had no contrast in the original version either, you see. It was just all fairly evenly dark.

But I might try getting some contrast into the facial features, see what it looks like.

cheers

 

[batjko]

chris, I have to say, if I had to decide between your version and mine, I would not hesitate to choose mine, simply because it is a bit more stylized and putting the subject into the spotlight better. But that is really just my personal taste, and I suppose any client might have different expectation as to the realism of the final edit.

However, I now can't un-see the problem with the glasses! I really do need to bring some of that reflection back, and I suppose just a hint of contrast in the outer area of the cheekbone.

 

[Tom Mann]

FWIW, if my goal was to "spotlight" a subject, I would adjust the background, not adjust an already decent lighting / retouch job on the subject.

T

 

[batjko]

But the original lighting was anything but "decent". I should know, I took that snapshot.
Having the camera-facing side so underexposed against a lighter background was just awful (though unavoidable, as I only had a split second to shoot it).

But I have to say, looking at it again a second time, I can appreciate chris' version more as it does save that dark half of the face pretty well compared to the original.

 

[Tom Mann]

By "decent", I was referring to the condition of the subject *after* retouching. How he started out doesn't really matter.

T

 

[Tom Mann]

I had a few minutes this morning to play with your latest image. Probably the most noticeably different tweaks that I did were:

a) sharpen up the image a bit more ... much more than this and there would be too many artifacts;

b) burn and dodge to try to move shadows and highlights around to make the light sources look like they were a bit higher and less diffuse;

c) paint in selective increases in contrast in some areas;

d) quickly try to reconstruct some detail in the blown highlights;

e) darken the background and introduce a gradient to make the subject stand out more (aka, "spotlight" him).

BTW, FWIW, my very first step was to tweak the color version in ACR to get it looking as nice as possible in color before converting to B&W and continuing on with further tweaking of the image.

T

PS - Since we had already discussed the reflections in the glasses and I didn't want to spend too much time on this, I hardly paid any attention to fiddly things like the reflections, masking, etc.

PPS - In retrospect, since the original was so blurry, I probably should have spent the time to introduce some fake skin texture because the left side of his face (viewer's right) is too smooth for my taste.

 

[Tom Mann]

To aid in making direct comparisons, here are some of the earlier versions, all down-rez'ed to 500 px high and converted to B&W.

First, the OP's original B&W conversion:



Next, the original color version, using nothing more than simple desaturation to convert it to B&W -- no other changes.



Cheers,

Tom

 

[batjko]

Tom, I definitely like that gradient background! That's a great way to make the subject pop out more.
The face has some nice contrast / clarity now maybe a little too dark around that right eye, but overall the balance between the left and right side of the face is really great. Nicely done!

Looking a bit closer, what happened to the mouth? Got a little sharpened edge around the lips now?

 

[Tom Mann]

Re the mouth, all I can say is, "whoops, sorry" , LOL.

One has to be very careful when applying this much sharpening because one tends to get lots of very bright and very dark halos around features that already had reasonable contrast. In my rush to get this demo done, I completely forgot to check that area of the image. :-(

T