Portrait of my Wife

[Armand]

A natural picture of my wife, while we are having morning coffee. C&C welcome as always.

[AB26]

Hi Armand,

Sure keeper for you to remind you of good times.
It is what you call it "a natural picture".
She is a lovely lady.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Lyuben,

That is a nice portrait, I'd like to be able to get natural expressions like that myself.

If I had shot it, there are a few things I would do in PP and while each is quite minor in itself, together I think they'll help remove a few distractions from your lovely wife.

Clone out the bright L shape in lower right corner
Clone out, or desaturate, the red and orange blobs behind her head on the left
Clone out the bright thing (a light perhaps?) in the top right corner
Clone out the odd stray hair that has caught the light
Slightly brighten the shadow side of her face

Hope that helps,

[Colin Southern]

Hi Armand,

A very lovely lady you have there.

I think your white balancing is significantly out though, and some hot spots and shadow levels need a little tweaking.

Hope you don't mind, but I've given the portrait a quick retouch for you to show you what I mean.

[Armand]

Hi guys and thanks for the comments, much appreciated. With Dave I agree 100 % .. or maybe 99% as I was wondering myself about the last part - the darkening/brightening of the darker side of her face. Finally I decided to leave it as it was, I think I even darkened it just a tiny bit - I think it makes the picture a bit more dramatic and her face not so flat.
@Colin - I like what you have done with the background retouch. I didn't edit the picture at all, except light/tone. For the White balance - I usually prefer my pictures "hotter" - it gives some warmth to the aura of the person in my oppionion. I like the eyes on your retouch, they look brighter, but the right side looks a tad overexposed for my taste.
Thanks!

[Colin Southern]

@Colin - I like what you have done with the background retouch. I didn't edit the picture at all, except light/tone. For the White balance - I usually prefer my pictures "hotter" - it gives some warmth to the aura of the person in my oppionion. I like the eyes on your retouch, they look brighter, but the right side looks a tad overexposed for my taste.
Thanks!

Normally folks can go about 200 kelvin warmer to add a bit of warmth, but yours looked to be quite a bit more than that. The other issue with pushing colour temps too much is that you risk blowing a channel, which is what happened with the area under the (subject) left eye.

Are you working from a profiled monitor? If not then I suspect that you're not seeing what I'm seeing.

[Armand]

Ok, thanks Colin. Nope, not a profiled, just an ordinary, old LCD, so makes sence.

[Colin Southern]

Ok, thanks Colin. Nope, not a profiled, just an ordinary, old LCD, so makes sence.

Ah. I think you might get a bit of a "surprise" when you do finally get it profiled.