Please help me choose

[Alex]

Hello all,

After getting a great deal of advice given to me in the absolute beginners forum, I ended up with two images. The top one is more heavily post processed than the bottom. I would like to know which one would you people prefer? If neither, please say so also

Thanks

Alex

[mudder]

G'day Alex,
The first seems to be more of a "model" or glam shot, seems like blurred/softened skin details, levels or contrast adjustment (lost details in the hair and deeper colour)...

Re: which is preferred, s'pose that depends on what the purpose is, the second looks more "natural" to me but the first looks more "finished"...

Dunno if that helps at all though

Cheers.

[MHD]

Very pretty....
it is hard... I like the tone in the cheeks of the first, but I like the tones in the hair in the second...

[Geoff]

Hi Alex,
They are both great results (on my monitor) but I took prefer the first one. To me there are only a few minor differences in the two of them but the contrast and sharpness appears better in the first image. The 2nd one seems softer. How much PP did you do? I'm sure I can speak for the rest of the community here and ask what you did to this image in the PP process...hmm..the post processing process...now that's a mouthful. Keep up the great work,


Geoff.

[Killakoala]

I think i would prefer the top one. It's much more soft focus and as Mudder says, more 'Glam'. You might have cloned out the young ladies freckles too. I bet she'd like that.

Great pic BTW. I really like it. She's very pretty. Do you know her? Do you have her phone number? Is she doing anything on Friday night?

[Alex]

Thanks, guys. I used gaussian blur on the top image and very little on the bottom one. The top image also has darker hair as I had to make it darker on the left first to get rid of the red background and then had to make hair on the right darker to avoid too much of a difference in the colour on the two sides.

Hmmm.. still undecided but inclined towards the top one

Cheers
Alex

[MATT]

I love the second one , cause its not the "GLAM/Model" look.

It appears more natural , the way a woman should look.


But that is just my opinion

Good work on both though Alex


MATT

[Alex]

I think i would prefer the top one. It's much more soft focus and as Mudder says, more 'Glam'. You might have cloned out the young ladies freckles too. I bet she'd like that.

Great pic BTW. I really like it. She's very pretty. Do you know her? Do you have her phone number? Is she doing anything on Friday night?

I am quite sick of her actually after hours of post processing, so you can have her. I don't know her. There was a Thai New Year festival in Melbourne last weekend and a model show. After the show she was walking around with friends and people were taking photos with her so I decided to take a photo of her (or at least my hobby was the excuse to my wife who is getting gradually annoyed with me spending hours in front of computer displaying her photo in various shapes and forms). She is a nice subject for practicing my photoshop skills.

Thanks for the comments.


Alex

[Alex]

I love the second one , cause its not the "GLAM/Model" look.

It appears more natural , the way a woman should look.


But that is just my opinion

Good work on both though Alex


MATT

Thanks, Matt. I initially was aiming for the natural look non-glam as the photo was to go on the web-page covering the festival and this was simply to be a snap shot. Then after a number of posters posted their PP results, I was stunned and decided to practice some PPing. My wife has the same opinion as you regarding the photo preference. I might just have to upload both in the end,

Cheers
Alex

[lejazzcat]

#1 No doubt about it .
And youd probably want to clean up the edges of her frizzy hair, and the bit sticking our from her hat...
Good CU pal.

[marcus]

Firstly, I must say I think this is a great photo. For me, It's the first one. But if you only submitted the 2nd one I would have also said it's a great photo. As you can see from the posts so far, it comes down to personal choice. Well done.

[Alex]

Geoff,

Thanks for the nice comments.

The top one was processed as follows:

NEF was open in NC and D-lighting was applied then transferred as 16-bit TIFF to PS CS. In PS CS I selected the bright red area of the background (see the original image in the beginners forum), in the left bottom corner and desaturated it a bit to make the colours less vivid. Unfortunately some of her hair on that side had to be desaturated with it and I then burned her hair to a darker colour on that side to hide desaturated hair. To compensate for the darker hair on the LHS, I had to burn it a bit on the RHS. (See hair on the right of the bottom image for the true colour).

I used healing brush to soften the blemishes on her chin. Then I created a layer and applied Gaussian blur (radius 6) at 50 % opacity followed by the eraser tool to bring the original sharpness in eyes, eyebrows, lips, teeth, hair and hat, i.e. everything but the face skin. I flattened the layers and that was it. Oh yeah and I erased the blur on the birth spots on her cheek, I thought they suited her.

The bottom image had the same as the first in NC. In PS I selectively desaturated the red background and tried to bring back the hair colour a little. Then applied Gaussian blur at 1.0 radius on the original layer. I didn't use eraser tool to bring out sharpness anywhere because I didn't notice much difference from 1.0 pixel blur. Then I used healing brush to soften the blemishes on her chin.

I also used a very slight crop on the RHS of both images.

Cheers
Alex

[Alex]

Firstly, I must say I think this is a great photo. For me, It's the first one. But if you only submitted the 2nd one I would have also said it's a great photo. As you can see from the posts so far, it comes down to personal choice. Well done.

Thanks Marcus.

Cheers
Alex

[shutterbug]

Very nice Alex

1st one is my pick.

[ru32day]

But I agree with what others have said - it's a terrific shot. Well done.

[leek]

Both shots are good (for different reasons)...

The first one is more polished in my opinion... You've lost all of the distracting background colours and the skin and hair are very smoothly softened...

However, the second photo shows much more detail of the skin tone / texture and the hair looks more natural as well...

I have no doubt that the model would pick number 1 as their favourite shot...

P.S. She has a cheeky smile that is quite captivating...

[KerryPierce]

I agree with the others, Alex. Both photos are very appealing. She's a lovely lady that you captured well. You mentioned having to darken the hair to get the look in the background that you wanted. FWIW, I normally do background work on a layer and erase the main subject on that layer, so the bottom layer shows through and won't be affected adversely by the background work that needs done.

[Alex]

I agree with the others, Alex. Both photos are very appealing. She's a lovely lady that you captured well. You mentioned having to darken the hair to get the look in the background that you wanted. FWIW, I normally do background work on a layer and erase the main subject on that layer, so the bottom layer shows through and won't be affected adversely by the background work that needs done.

Thanks Kerry,

This is an excellent idea. Haven't though of that. The problem is also that the background (bright red) is interleaved with the parts of hair and that would make it very difficuly. I have very little experience with PS, but thanks for the suggestion.

Cheers
Alex

[Alex]

A Big "Thank you" to everyone for their suggestions and invaluable comments.

Regards
Alex

[KerryPierce]

Thanks Kerry,

This is an excellent idea. Haven't though of that. The problem is also that the background (bright red) is interleaved with the parts of hair and that would make it very difficuly. I have very little experience with PS, but thanks for the suggestion.

Cheers
Alex

It's not a big deal, Alex. Open your image in PS, duplicate the background. Use the lasso tool to roughly outline (inside) all of the woman's head and hair, except for the parts that will be more difficult, and delete the selected area. Turn off visibility on the bottom layer and then do your background work like before.

When you're done with that, you can then use the eraser brush, with a slight feather and perhaps less than 100% opacity, to erase the parts of her hair that you don't want affected by the background work. Zoom in and out to make it easier to do. It isn't likely that you'd need to be concerned with the stray strands of hair and other smaller portions, because it's in a shadow area anyway and should blend in rather easily.

[Alex]

Thanks for this method, Kerry. I'll give it a go.

Cheers
Alex