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Emma – A portrait
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Had put this up on Flikr and decided to see what you guys thought. I experimented with exposure and contrast on this shot and I liked the results. The only niggling thing, as pointed out to me by Ross is that I’ve lost most of the nose outline, but try as I might I can’t get it back without totally losing the effect..it was weak in the original colour shot anyway.
It *is* a nice idea, but it’s really just blown to smithereens – too much of her face is lost (blending into her neck on the left side, blending into the background on the right side). I’d like to see the same effect, but actually able to make out her face in its entirety.
I Like it.
Its very abstract which really appeals to me.
Here is my attempt at the same thing
Although I commented on the lost outline of the nose on Flickr, I certainly dont think it completely spolis the shot. Far from it. In fact it reminds me very much of one of my own favourite images, which has a similar ‘problem’…..
Ross
Thanks for the comments guys :D
Ross..that’s a lovely shot and it has retained more outline than mine. I think I might try this again, because I like this effect, but this time take the shot deliberately with a strong outline. Any tips on what the best way to achieve that would be?
I used a method called something like ‘digidaan’ ( :lol: ) to convert to black and white, and then worked on it a bit more. You might try a search for the action. From memory the shot was perfectly exposed at the start. I will have a look to see if I can find any more info on it myself.
Ross
This is the original thread on dpreview which led to me creating that photo:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=3842725
Digidaan link:
http://www.digidaan.nl/indexframedigidaan.html?channelmixer/index.html
Thanks Ross..I’ll check that out later. Cheers :D
Here’s the original…it has quite an orange cast from the low lighting. It’s been up on my Flikr page for quite a bit… so if ya wanna grab the bigger size is there. Thanks again for the comments.
:D
I like the shot Robbie, but, as you’ve said, there a fair loss of detail ’round the nose…..I’m not too sure how you did the processing but I’d imagine if you burned the outline of the nose prior to processing, it would help in retaining the outline at the end?
Let me know what you think…
There’s really too much data missing from the image to do any sort of realistic recovery. The image overall is overexposed and the red channel in particular is is very badly blown and unfortunately that’s the channel you need most for the effect to work. Nevertheless, I had a go at it and this is what I came up with:
Not sure if it’s what you were looking for. Here’s a brief outline of the steps I took.
I attempted to get rid of as much of the orange cast first by converting the image to LAB mode and adjusting the A and B curves. I then converted back to RGB mode and made some further colour adjustments using the Hue/Saturation sliders on individual channels before converting the image to monochrome using a variation of the channel mixer method, extracting each channel into it’s own layer (Red, Green and Blue). I set the Red channel layer to 100% opacity and then put as much detail back into the hair, eyes, lips and other features by painting in the relevant items from the Green Channel layer. After flattening, I added some additional contrast by duplicating the monochrome layer and changing the blending mode to Multiply and adjusting the opacity until it looked right. There were probably one or two other steps that I missed (as I didn’t take notes) but that’s the general gist of it. There’s probably an easier way to do it that gives a better result, but this way enabled me to try and compensate for the missing data.
Here is brandyman’s attempt.
I think you are after a more high key approach? I found it difficult to get a crop which moved the eyes away from the centre of the image, which I think is a problem with the original? Anyway, personally I was very pleased with this result and would be interested to hear opinions on it? And I forgot to add, with such a beautiful model it makes all the effort wothwhile! :DRoss
Hi All,
Expresbro, There is a well known photographer in the north down area that had a shot a lot like this blown up and framed. The shot was about 30 x 20 or around this. It was in his window for a long time and a lot of people had remarked on it. I love the shot, I thinks it very abstract if that the right word, very modern. There is another well known studio consortium in the uk, they do a lot of work that is like this, they call them lifestyle portraits, some of the work they do is outstanding and other stuff in my opinion is ” dubious ” to say the least. It’s all about what pleases you and if you are commissioned for a job they what the client likes. the only thing although not any type of a problem is the border/ frame, I’m not to keen on that although if it was to be framed and mounted it wouldn’t be and issue. For me it works , well done and thanks for sharing………….
Brandyman, I like your work on this shot, you seem to have gained a high key effect and kept a lot more detail. Well Done also.
All in all I think we have 2 terrific images here. Expresbro has the modern, hip image and Ross the more traditional image. Either one I feel would be impressive in large print mounted on the wall.
Wow…am thrilled that one of my shots gets the full treatment :D I must be doing something right.
Thanks for the two edits lads. I know there was a lot of missing data on the original so it made the job all the harder. I like them both and is amazing how one image can give such contrasting results. For me Ross’s edit is closer to what I originally liked about my effort and am impressed with the amount of detail he’s recovered while still retaining the high key ( I didn’t even know that was what this type of image is called!!) element. This was probably the first time I’d attempted a portrait type shot and I probably did everything wrong so am really chuffed to end up with such a striking shot.
Thanks guys
Robbie
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