Edit My Image - Studio Portrait of Melissa

[Paul Jones]

Following on from Mark's earlier 'Edit My Image' thread and Mel's 'Studio Portrait' thread, I thought some of you might want to try your hand at editing a portrait.

This image of Melissa is 'straight out of the camera'. I have just converted the RAW file into a JPEG for uploading to the web. I know it's not a full-size image but see what you can do with it. Feel free to do anything you want to it.

Save it to your computer, edit it in whatever way you think suits it and then upload your finished version. It might also help others if you give a brief explanation of the processes you used.

[Mrs Sales]

Here's my go,


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

it's such a good photo that you've taken there's not much really obvious to do with it so I had to put my nitpicking hat on

I selected her out of the background and lightened her (white layer over with opacity dropped) because she looked a little too orange to me
then I used the Spot Healing brush set at 2 and got rid of some small bumps on her nose, chin and under one eye
then, (because it was taking my eye from her face) I selected that hair chunk, feathered the selection by 150 and then blurred it (guassian blur of making it much softer and less distracting

[Mrs Sales]

that was a Guassian blur of EIGHT not smiley face????
this proboard hates my iMac

[Stu B]

Here's my twopeneth for what its worth... Be very interested to know if anyone can handle those highlights

[mikeaspinall]

Asking me to edit one of Paul's portraits is like Leonardo asking a 'paint it by numbers' novice to edit his Mona Lisa but if you insist ....................

I have tried to take out some of the strands of hair which I personally found distracting, obviously changed to mono, used the Niksoft program with a slight
vignette, tried to tone down the shadow caused by her nose and finally tried to tone down the 'hot spot?' on her left forehead (as we look at it).
Hope that I haven't ruined your fine image too much Maestro.

[keith richardson]

Hi,
Don't normally join in with these, but I do like messing about with pictures of melissa.
My little effort...
Cropped, rotated and filtered a little through various nik filters.

forumpic_editmyimage_melissa v2.jpg (136.66 KiB) Viewed 10959 times

keith.

Let me know if it looks very dark, it looks fine on my photo processing PC, which has been calibrated, but a bit darker on this one, which is uncalibrated.
ta.

[Tracey McGovern]

Hi Paul

Here is my attempt........
Got rid of some minor skin imperfections using both clone and healing tool. Also cloned out the stray strands of hair (top right of the image).
Cropped a bit off the left side.
Changed the colour of her eyes from brown to blue.
Using Nik: softened the skin and added a vignette
Sharpened the eyes, nose and lips.
That's it, took about 15 minutes.

Paul's-melissa-(Edited-TM).jpg (136.72 KiB) Viewed 10943 times

Tracey

[collier15]

Well here goes my turn now I've used a program called Photoscape (freeware)

Michael

[melbarnes]

Hi Paul,

I thought I'd have a bash with Photoshop too - practice makes perfect (eventually!).

- first I used the clone tool to remove minor skin blemishes, the loose hair at the top of her face, and to tidy up the hair to the right of the photo
- the I used the dodge tool (20%) to lighten the eyes
- then the burn tool on mid-tones (5%) to reduce the highlights on her forehead, cheeks, and nose
- next was levels adjustment - sliding the mid slider left to 0.9
- I wanted to reduce the "tan" effect of her skin, so I adjusted Hues: yellow to -72, and red to -10 (does this go against the advice you gave me previously, ie that the yellow should be higher than the red for skin tones?

That's it!

Cheers, Mel

[Paul Jones]

It's good to see so many people joining in and very interesting to see the different styles that each of you has used.

I'm not going to comment or choose a winner as that wasn't the object of the thread. Just to explore processing techniques and to see how the same image can be interpreted in different ways.

Does anyone else want to start an 'Edit My Image' thread? We could make it a regular feature of the Images Forum.

[Paul Jones]

I thought I would post my own retouched version for comparison.

My overall aim when retouching is to try to not make it look retouched, so there are certain things that I usually do but I never spend ages on an image.

In this shot there were a few things that bothered me that I wanted to attend to, including:

- dark patch of skin under her right eye
- a few white spots on her black top
- the line going across the front of her neck
- spots on her forehead
- the eyes needed brightening up
- gaps in her hair

My finished image comprised 13 seperate layers / adjustments, including:

- heal / clone skin blemishes
- clone marks away from her black top
- lighten her eyes
- add contrast to her eyes
- make the catchlights slightly larger and more even
- clone in some missing eyelashes above her left eye
- clone in several gaps in her hair
- tidy up her hair
- remove the dark skin under her right eye
- darken shadows and increase highlights
- soften the skin
- reduce saturation

There is absolutely no right or wrong. It comes down to personal taste.

Thank-you again for joining in.

[KEASLA]

I thought I would have a quick go, I spent 2 mins in camera raw to do this I did not use the main part of photoshop to do any of the edits even the eye colour change.

[Mrs Sales]

When you guys say Camera Raw do you mean the Open Image screen in photoshop for RAW files?

or is it some software thing that comes with cameras?

[KEASLA]

It's the camera raw in photoshop

[Mrs Sales]

still no wiser??????

just typed it into the photoshop help search box and it gives me ...