Specific Need polishing on this image a bit

[Dziga74]

Would like to see what you guys can do with this image. Really just looking to polish it a bit, fix the exposure, color tweaks, maybe bring out a little more detail in the woman (without going overboard on the AI). It is ultimately intended to be printed so please repost your adjustments in the same resolution. Thanks very much!

 

[Argos]

I know you said withouth AI but i think it was important to gain quality in this case. i was having fun so i made two version

 

[ex_teacher]

In another direction

 

[Dziga74]

I know you said withouth AI but i think it was important to gain quality in this case. i was having fun so i made two version

View attachment 123263

View attachment 123265

Thanks so much! They both look great I think I prefer the first one. Only meant to go easy on the AI (which you did), I find sometimes people tend to go heavy on it and the person starts looking like a mannequin. You managed to keep her looking like a living person. Excellent work Thanks again!

 

[Dziga74]

In another direction

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Great Job! thanks! Funny I was considering requesting a traditional brick wall but I didn't want to be greedy. Really well done!!

 

[Argos]

Thanks, glad we could help ^^.
I think i prefer the second one, but its only because i have a thing for low contrast/faded photos

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @Dziga74
Can you provide a link on an file/image sharing site of a higher quality starting image preferably in lossless format such as TIFF. The image you provided is JPEG with considerable compression with detail loss and JPEG artifacts. The native size of an 8 bit version is 26 MB yet the JPEG file is only ~800 KB. That’s about 30x compression and lost quality. A better end result should be possible with a higher quality starting image.
just a suggestion
John Wheeler.

 

[Dziga74]

Hi @Dziga74
Can you provide a link on an file/image sharing site of a higher quality starting image preferably in lossless format such as TIFF. The image you provided is JPEG with considerable compression with detail loss and JPEG artifacts. The native size of an 8 bit version is 26 MB yet the JPEG file is only ~800 KB. That’s about 30x compression and lost quality. A better end result should be possible with a higher quality starting image.
just a suggestion
John Wheeler.

Yeah, I'm aware of the compression and quality loss issues. Unfortunately the only version I have of this image is the one I posted. Believe me, I wish I had a tiff of the original. Thanks for the info though, the file sharing idea is a good one.

 

[JeffK]

Hi @Dziga74
Can you provide a link on an file/image sharing site of a higher quality starting image preferably in lossless format such as TIFF. The image you provided is JPEG with considerable compression with detail loss and JPEG artifacts. The native size of an 8 bit version is 26 MB yet the JPEG file is only ~800 KB. That’s about 30x compression and lost quality. A better end result should be possible with a higher quality starting image.
just a suggestion
John Wheeler.

John - I don't completely understand your comment although I don't doubt its accuracy. Looking at the document size of this image, this is what I'm seeing:



Seems a decent resolution and size to work with- can you maybe explain further? I know a tiff would be far larger...

- Jeff

 

[JeffK]

I tried a few different things - tightened up the crop a bit, smoothed out her facial features, and a slight overall curves color correction.
Did a bit of dodging and burning to bring change shadows and bring out her facial features and dded a bit more color to her lips.
Also burned in the wall a bit just to give it more contrast against the subject.
The original is a lovely shot - thanks for the opportunity to add some comments!

 

[Argos]

Jeff the original image is 870kb, looking at the picture its probably its make with a professional camera by a photograper so the original quality would be a lot higher than that.
I dont think this post its created by the actress so i dont think he/she have the originals XD

 

[JeffK]

Jeff the original image is 870kb, looking at the picture its probably its make with a professional camera by a photograper so the original quality would be a lot higher than that.
I dont think this post its created by the actress so i dont think he/she have the originals XD

Maybe I'm not understanding the math. As above, when I download the image, I get an image of about 25 mbs. So I don't understand where the 870kb measurement is coming from. Am I reading something wrong?

 

[Argos]

When you click properties on the file you download from this forum, its 25mb?

 

[Rich54]

I also see the original jpeg as 25.5 mb. It's 2546 x 3500 pixels with resolution of 96ppi

 

[Argos]

I'm not an expert in formats etc but if i download the original image the size its 870kb on windows, and yes its 25mb on photoshop. I assume it descompresses the jpg when open in photoshop?

 

[Argos]

If i compare my edit with the original, mine is 3,38mb in windows and 25mb in photoshop same size and resolution.
So the 25 mb in photoshop looks more because of the size than quality or information.

 

[ex_teacher]

I hope this helps someone .

The image we are dealing with is a grid of 2546 x 3500 pixels. Multiply that and we get a total of 8,911,000 pixels Each pixel uses one Byte to describe each of 3 color channels (RGB). Thus in computer RAM that image is using 26,733,000 Bytes of memory which is 3 x 8,911,000. Divide this by 1024 to get Kilo Bytes and again by 1024 to get Mega Bytes (MB) and you will get the 25.5 MB PS reports... I have no idea why PS reports this as 25.5M.

This is for an 8 bit image (one byte per channel of color depth of those 3 channels whereas many of us use 2 bytes per channel or 16 bit color depth per channel for those 3 channels R, G and B.) That's where we get the commonly described 24 bit or 48 bit images: 8x3 and 16x3

When we store it to disk all bets are off on how much space in MB this image will take with various types of image file formats. For one thing, there is other info that needs to be stored such as conventional EXIF data AND, most importantly, compression may be taking place. FWIW all EXIF data has been stripped from this image file. Compression falls roughly into two categories: lossy and lossless Lossy means just that... image data is lost upon compression. The best example of lossy is JPeg compression. This file is currently stored as a #5 ( of 12 levels) quality Jpeg compression in PS. It may have been stored previously in an even lower quality. Lower numbers are worse...much worse. We can save and resave and manipulate JPegs repeatedly with little loss if they are saved in small compressions (ie high numbers) but these low numbers result is obvious JPeg compression artifacts which really become noticeable after most types of sharpening/clarity manipulations.

Our phone's cameras tend to use compression at the edge of noticeability and often when we send them via MMS texts they go way over the top with crazy high compression. There are some filters that attempt to reduce JPeg artifacts but they are a kludge at best. Manipulation by hand is usually best but best avoided if possible by using low compression (high numbers)

This is stereotypical Jpeg compression artifacting, enlarged and exaggerated

 

[JeffK]

If i compare my edit with the original, mine is 3,38mb in windows and 25mb in photoshop same size and resolution.
So the 25 mb in photoshop looks more because of the size than quality or information.

Yes, that is what I'm finding out. When I looked at the original file size downloaded, I get 847 kb. This same file, when I open in Photoshop, now yields 25.5 mb. In a sense, PS is uncompressing the file but only rendering it in its native size without changing resolution. Still confuses me but I would have to sit down with lots of coffee and work thru it. Suffice to say, a jpg downloaded will be smaller than an image loaded into PS.

@ex_teacher wrote:

Lower numbers are worse...much worse. We can save and resave and manipulate JPegs repeatedly with little loss if they are saved in small compressions (ie high numbers) but these low numbers result is obvious JPeg compression artifacts which really become noticeable after most types of sharpening/clarity manipulations.

I had tried using Gigapixel to upsize but the artifacts became really distracting. Had to go back to the original which already had poor resolution upon magnification.

@Dziga74 - it's still a beautiful shot. And sometimes technology is often a debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. What you see is what really counts.

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @JeffK

@ex_teacher beat me to it yet will add my own examples.

Here is the file info when downloaded and you look with a file manager e.g Finder in the case of my Mac:



So it is considerably compressed. JPEG format tries to hide the compression losses by compressing the color components more than the luminosity components and hiding its also less noticeable in the shadows and highlights. However, when you do post processing, those artifacts have the potential to look a lot worse and certainly limits the best end result you can achieve.

Echoing what @ex_teacher teacher put up, here is a close up and localized contrast enhanced picture of the face. All those artifacts are not on the model yet due to compression:



Much worse is what is hidden in the saturation component enhanced to show the blocking. The eye can't see this yet with color changes in post processing it can become quite visible. So its there which is OK if you don't do anything to reveal it. I turned up the contrast so it was easily seen:



And finally the Hue component. Again the eye can't see the color components very well yet post processing can make them surface and limit the best image you could get:
I only slightly increased the contrast to show the compression issue that is lurking in the data:



So when I was trying some enhancement techniques, I found I was being limited by the compression and thought to ask it there was an uncompressed version which allows more flexibility in post processing to get a good image. Always best to start with the best possible image and the OP confirmed it was not possible.
Hope this helps make visible the quality issues with highly compressed JPEG images. Its amazing the type of quality you can get given the huge loss of image data, yet you can always get better with either no or lossless compression images.
Just my point of view of course.
John Wheeler

 

[ex_teacher]

Hi @JeffK

@ex_teacher beat me to it yet will add my own examples.
Its amazing the type of quality you can get given the huge loss of image data, yet you can always get better with either no or lossless compression images.
Just my point of view of course.
John Wheeler

And it's a good point of view too.
Both of us mentioned Lossless but little else. Much like Zip files, some common formats like TIFF have to ability to compress with no losses. When we save in TIFF format a requester will pop up asking (among other things) if we want to use LZW or ZIP compression (both lossless). I'm pretty sure ZIP compression in TIFF format is a bit more efficient but you might not be able to open it with antiquated/ very old software.

Bruce