The Dancer Emerges

[Jim A]

I took this at a local show. This was a significant crop. Now having edited it, including adding a black border, I am concerned about the highlight at front. Any ideas please?

Also, I quite like when an image is quite enigmatic, but then quite a few others like a clear story. The title does give a good clue.

[Tronhard]

Great to see your work! Just starting to enjoy another week of Level 3 lock-down, as I am sure you are too!

I wondered if cropping up from the bottom to where the shadow hits the right side of the image: thus creating a line from the (new) corner and reducing the area of highest exposure would be worth pursuing. I realize that the large billowing area is where she came from, but you should still have a fair bit of that to make the point and hopefully not be overwhelmed by it. Just a thought...
Stay safe and well!

[Manfred M]

By no means perfect, but I would work to blend the bright and dark areas to event them out and concentrate the point of interest to be the dancer. It would probably take the better part of an hour to get this to look right, but one gets the idea...

[Wandjina]

... or something completely different

[mugge]

The dancer's complexion is too close to the yellow material in my opinion. I would prefer the black and white version. I would crop a bit off the bottom though.
Cheers Ole

[Jim A]

Many thanks for the feedback, Trev, Manfred, Martin and Ole! I like both what Manfred and Martin have done. For some reason quite a few of my works end up in B&W. Nevertheless, before posting I did spend the best part of an hour trying to fix the bright part, without great success. I tried adjustments - Brightness and Contrast; Highlights (and Shadows); HSL. However, I did not try Blend Modes, which thinking now - I should have. Are there any pointers that you can give me please Manfred?

[Manfred M]

Are there any pointers that you can give me please Manfred?

I had trouble blending the bright and dark areas in my initial attempts.

What I ended up trying is selecting the whole area of the material and desaturating it. I had picked out one of the colours and overlaid it and used the colour blend mode to mix the two areas together. I spent a bit of time blending the transition of the area in shade and area in light using the clone tool set to a low flow rate.

[Jim A]

I can follow that Manfred, thanks, except the concept of "overlaid". Is that what I would translate as a "fill" layer, where the layer is one uniform colour?

[pnodrog]

It puzzled me that the bright area was proving a little difficult to darken so I gave it a try. It proved a harder task than I had imagined. Anyhow having played with it I gave it an alternative crop. To do the basic adjustment I formed a mask of the bright area and used two separate layers to get an adjustment I was satisfied with. First layer was a tan selected from the photo blended using colour with layer transparency set to about 60% and the second layer was the same colour with the blend mode set to darken and the transparency reduced to about 80%. (Sorry after edit discarded Photoshop file so figures from memory)

After getting bright area subdued did some dodging, burning then a crop. Whatever preferred crop is used I think the photograph is definitely improved by darkening the bright area. Part of what interested me about this rather quirky image was how closely her hair colour matched the tan drape. I like photographs that trigger my imagination.

Jim if you are unhappy with such liberties being taken with your photo let me know and I will remove it.

[Manfred M]

I can follow that Manfred, thanks, except the concept of "overlaid". Is that what I would translate as a "fill" layer, where the layer is one uniform colour?

Sorry for being unclear.

I made a selection of the fabric and on a new layer above the desaturated fabric, i filled the selected area with a colour. I changed the blending mode of this new layer to "Color".

[Jim A]

Firstly, Paul, no worries at all, am very glad of your input and suggestions. At this stage, I have just followed Manfred's technique, more or less, but may well try yours too (though later as I am now exhausted after so much concentration!). I may yet crop higher from the bottom as you suggest.

Well, Manfred, this is what I have achieved so far basically following your ideas. As you said, the cloning using the brush on a lower setting. I had the flow about 30% which worked well. Many thanks indeed for your help.

[pnodrog]

Jim I think you have done an excellent job of getting the unwanted highlights under control. I made no effort to gently blend the division between the two areas but you have done it very well.

[Manfred M]

It looks like you are making progress Jim.

As Paul said, trying to get the bright and dark areas to look natural takes a bit of work, but if one technique does not work, try something else. What you have appears to be good enough.

I was looking at converting the image into the L* a* b* colour space and just working the L* channel as that takes the saturation and brightness out of the workflow. That can sometimes be very effective.