Rural Portraiture

[ashish]

She is in her late eighties but her energy and the amount of hard work she puts in on a daily basis is amazing.

Taken at a small village called Purushwadi in the state of Maharashtra, India.

C&C welcome.

[Kaye Leggett]

Beautiful

[bnnrcn]

Hi Ashish I can't believe her age ! Very nice image, may be a bit more structure ?

[IzzieK]

I was thinking exactly the same as Binnur...'Needs more structure or sharpening to bring out those creases and wrinklies ... but sometimes I am not sure about how much because she is a she...her skin is supposed to be softer. Your narrative about her age should tell you how much or how less sharpening can be done here... In any case, it is a compelling image...

P.S. Will it be rude to ask about why your people have rings on their noses? Is it a symbol or something?

[DEAN01]

A wonderful portrait of a worthy subject.

[rpcrowe]

Wonderful image... I agree with both Binnur and Izzie that some more structure might be in order. I tried 20% additional structure in Viveza 2 and it looks just about right to me...

[Downrigger]

Wonderful. Impressive person, beautifully captured.

I can sort of see the point about structure - I use it in Viveca - but would love an explanation of what it really is. Some sort of very fine scale contrast adjustment, but I wonder if it corresponds to anything achievable with LR or PS.

[rpcrowe]

Here is a post that I started about Structure in NIK Viveza
Anyone like NIK Viveza Structure as much as I do?

Here's what a 20% structure increase (NIK Viveza using Structure slider) looks like...



What I did not mention (but what was mentioned in the quoted article) is that you can use the structure slider to soften an image or parts of an image.



The structure slider is located at the right side of the NIK Viveza work space along with many other control sliders. To globally increase the structure (sharpen) of the image, move the slider to the image right. To globally decrease the structure (soften) of the image move the slider to image left.

To increase or decrease the structure in selected area or areas, use the control points to select the areas. I used a control point to select the woman's eye and increased (sharpened) the structure of that eye to 35%.

[GBO25]

Ashish structure or no structure it's a beautifully exposed wonderful image. I really like it.

[Aeros]

+1

[John 2]

That's a very nice portrait. I agree that adding structure to bring out more texture in such an interesting face improves it though. In reply to one of the Qs above, I think the Vivesa Structure tool adds micro contrast, i.e. at a pixel level rather than between tonal areas. It seems to do the same thing as the Clarity tool in Adobe's RAW Converter. I am not aware of an equivalent tool in Photoshop itself, at least not up to version CS6 - any one???

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[bnnrcn]

Hi Mark The clarity slider in LR or ACR does a similar job but it is not the same thing really .

Wonderful. Impressive person, beautifully captured.

I can sort of see the point about structure - I use it in Viveca - but would love an explanation of what it really is. Some sort of very fine scale contrast adjustment, but I wonder if it corresponds to anything achievable with LR or PS.

[ashish]

I was thinking exactly the same as Binnur...'Needs more structure or sharpening to bring out those creases and wrinklies ... but sometimes I am not sure about how much because she is a she...her skin is supposed to be softer. Your narrative about her age should tell you how much or how less sharpening can be done here... In any case, it is a compelling image...

P.S. Will it be rude to ask about why your people have rings on their noses? Is it a symbol or something?

Thanks Izzie for your thoughts... your question about nose rings is definitely not rude. Here is a link which you might find interesting http://www.indiamarks.com/nose-rings...ment-in-india/

[ashish]

Wonderful image... I agree with both Binnur and Izzie that some more structure might be in order. I tried 20% additional structure in Viveza 2 and it looks just about right to me...

Richard, thanks for taking the effort to edit it using Viveza 2. I haven't used it as yet but seeing your results i'll surely download it and give it a go.

[IzzieK]

Thanks Izzie for your thoughts... your question about nose rings is definitely not rude. Here is a link which you might find interesting http://www.indiamarks.com/nose-rings...ment-in-india/

Interesting article. Thank you Ashish for the link. I appreciate it very much.