What's new
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Hi! I am new here and need help editing an image please :)


breee

New Member
Messages
3
Likes
0
I accidentally posted this on the newbie thread! I'm sorry for repeating myself.

I need help editing a RAW file. I cant get the lighting to look right (I wasnt paying attention to my camera settings when taking the photo). I didnt know if anyone here would be willing to help me adjust the lighting and make the photo look nice and presentable to the girls in the photo. Any help would be AMAZING! If anyone would like to take a shot at the RAW file I can message it to you. I attached a sample of one of the photos. Thanks again!

Bree
 

Attachments

  • Sample3.jpg
    Sample3.jpg
    2 MB · Views: 8
The picture, lighting, etc . look perfectly fine to me. It's a straight up documentary shot, so what exactly do you want done to it? Efx, drama, tighten up the composition, or what?

T
 
I don't know why I'm not happy with it :( I guess it's because I am used to doing maternity and family portraits and this shoot was totally new to me. Do what you think is best for the shot and maybe that will give me an idea of what I don't like about the original image. Thank you soooooo much for your help! You're awesome! :)
 
Just curious what's the name of the guy(just first name) that hired you for that picture I know that bar
 
Just curious what's the name of the guy(just first name) that hired you for that picture I know that bar

I thought your bars was spelt with two 'T's not a K:rofl:
 
I stand by my original evaluation of your photo ... essentially it's fine just as it is if it's purpose is to be a straightforward documentary shot. If you were a reporter for a local paper and handed that photo to an editor (print or web) for a story on the bar or as part of an advertisement for that bar, the photo would probably run more or less exactly as is. The guys running an offset web-fed press for the paper would absolutely love you because your image wouldn't give them any problems.

The single (minor) pure technical problem I noticed is that you posted the photo in the Adobe RGB color space. Some web browsers and image viewing software, particularly, older ones, won't interpret the colors correctly. They will make the image appear quite muted / faded -- perhaps this even happened to you and this is one of the reasons you are not particularly happy with the image.

The solution is to *ALWAYS* convert your images to sRGB before they go to anywhere except to either your own printer or to a print bureau that knows how to deal with non-sRGB images.

You are obviously well past the point of knowing how to produce sharp, well-exposed, and reasonably framed pix, but it sounds like you are looking to refine your skills even more, so here are some suggestions. Take them with a grain of salt, because once you get past the point of "sharp and well-exposed", personal opinion starts becoming more and more important.

My guess is that you really don't want this image to look like a shot in the local paper, but rather, you want to turn it into something more polished and dramatic.

If this was my shoot, I would first do everything in my power to get the subjects to stand out more from the busy background. Yes, you can move the image in this direction in post processing, but no photographer in their right mind would *ever* do this as their first option. Shooting with non-optimal technique, and assuming that you can fix everything in post processing is beyond silly -- it's stupid. It takes too much time, and the results will never be as good as if you optimized everything before you pressed the shutter release button.

Specifically, if I were doing this shot over, I would:

1. Illuminate the subjects from the front with at least 2 big pro flash units equipped with modifiers to provide wide fan shaped beams. These will allow you to maintain a good exposure on the subjects while decreasing the exposure of the background by 1 or 2 stops. Having flashes for key and fill lighting will also allow you to drop the ISO from 1600 (that you used) down to 100 or 200, thereby getting sharper, more noise-free, colorful images. From the EXIF data in your photo, it appears that you did use a flash, but it was either too small or set at too low of an output level to get the subjects brighter than the background.

2. If possible, I would also illuminate the subjects from the rear with other flashes to give them some rim lighting. Probably the most common place you will see this is in wedding dance photos. The photographer will have someone hold a little remotely triggered flash and keep moving so that the couple is always between him and the photographer. Go to google images and search on {rim lighting}. Another possibility is to raise the rear flashes well above the subjects' heads to turn them into hair lights. Both rim and hair lights provide nice separation of the subjects from the background.

3. The background in the image you posted is very busy, and to be honest, with the exception of the sign, IMHO, contributes almost nothing to the image. My suggestion #1, above, will darken the background, but it needs more help than just darkening. One of the standard ways to clean up cluttered backgrounds is to shoot with a wide aperture, long telephoto lens. The long focal length takes in a much smaller range of angles and it makes it much easier for the photographer to find a less busy background. The wide aperture will blur the background, similar to what you see in many pro sports photos.

4. Next, I would compose the image quite differently from the way you did. Sometimes one wants to shoot at an angle in the left-right direction to incorporate diagonal elements in the scene. Diagonals graphical elements are generally considered more "dynamic" and interesting. You possibly shot this image not perpendicular to the row of bikes for this reason, but the problem is that even though you did this, it didn't turn anything in the scene into a really some strong diagonal eye-catching graphical element. IMHO, the converging vanishing lines formed by their heads and feet are just too weak. Instead, IMHO, all you did is make the poor girl on the (viewer's) left look like a midget 2nd class citizen, and the girl on the right look unusually large, all for no apparent visual reason.

5. Also, with the composition you used, the spacing between the girls gets larger and larger as you go from L to R, again, with no benefit to the image (IMHO). I would have gone for a much more symmetrical, equally spaced arrangement that would exhibit strong "geometry". Again, to be ruthless in eliminating anything not contributing to the core message of the picture, I would crop it much more tightly than you did.

I suspect that the huge tree and building on the LHS are well known features of your establishment, and hence you wanted to use them, but graphically, IMHO, they only make for a confusing background. I'm not sure what's to the right of the sign, but from what I can see, I would have given serious thought to arranging the subjects and their bikes on either side of the sign (and shooting with a much longer FL).

Obviously, I can't simulate all of the above photographic suggestions in PS, but I made a quick and dirty attempt to give you an idea of the sort of look I would go for. For easy comparison, I also put a copy of your original right below my tweaked version.

Cheers,

Tom
 

Attachments

  • Sample3-tjm01-acr-ps04b_sRGB-690px_wide-8bpc-03.jpg
    Sample3-tjm01-acr-ps04b_sRGB-690px_wide-8bpc-03.jpg
    220 KB · Views: 31
  • Sample3-00_orig-xnv_690px_wide.jpg
    Sample3-00_orig-xnv_690px_wide.jpg
    197.8 KB · Views: 31
Actually Macshopped, that's not bad, not overly saturated, perhaps the leafs in the trees are bit overdone but I like that nice job
 
Last edited:

Back
Top