Critique Please.....

[Toothtek]

[Shadowman]

Nicely posed, good dynamic flow with the hair, however there seems to be a blue cast to her eyes.

[Toothtek]

Nicely posed, good dynamic flow with the hair, however there seems to be a blue cast to her eyes.

Whats the best way to fix that? I am using cs5

Thank you!

[Shadowman]

Mitch,

A levels adjustment or curve adjustment should fix it.

[rpcrowe]

Another way would be to download NIK Software as a Photoshop Plug-in.

Simply use Viveza, put control points on each eye and reduce the blue with the slider.... Or just desaturate and brighten the eyes. Actually a combination of the above works well.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Mitch,

There's a lot I think you have got right here, as I am 'learning the craft' as well, may I mention a few things?

For me; the biggest issue with the pose is that her shoulder and arm are the closest things to the camera, hence the largest.
It is also well lit and is competing with her face for our attention.

Your model's clothes don't suit her bra, also there's a chunky pendant (?) around the front which is a distraction.

The catch-lights are good, although there's a specular in the corner of her left eye which I'd remove in PP.

What I like is; the hair blowing, the complementary colours, the separation of subject from background, the background lighting and negative space, not to mention the model herself and the Paramount lighting on her and tonal range.

What might address the issues?
I don't think you can adequately aim the main light for her face while maintaining suitable softness, so this suggests this pose + lighting angle might be better with her shoulder and upper arm covered by mid-tone to darker clothing.
I wonder if some subtle burning of the shoulder might help this shot, perhaps try half a stop.
I already mentioned cloning out the extra specular in her eye, and while the clone tool is active, perhaps remove the pendant thing?

Hope that is as helpful to you as it has been to me (to 'think it through'), Dave

[madcrow]

Good effort and image.

[Manfred M]

Fixing the whites of the eyes requires making a selection of them (I used the quick selection tool in Photoshop CC 2017) and removing both the blue and cyan using an adjustment layer in combination with a layer mask. As the parts of the bra have a very similar tone as the whites of the eyes do, I suspect they too have a significant cyan / blue cast. I used a similar approach as with the eyes, but found it easier to make the selection with the pen tool. The adjustment needs to be made to both the highlights and midtones - remember that you add red to reduce the cyan and add yellow to reduce the blue.

I find that I agree with the issues Dave has brought up as well. You shot this with a 50mm lens; that is far too short. On that full frame Canon 6D used in the shot, I would definitely look at something closer to 80mm or 105mm as the shortest focal length I would use and that would eliminate the distortion issues. The standard portrait zoom put out by Canon, Nikon, etc, for portraiture work will be the 70-200mm lens, so that should give you an idea about the most appropriate focal lengths to use.

I also don't like the way the bottom camera right side of your subject's clothing fade into the background. Either a rim light or a background light to cause some separation there would fix that little issue.

I also find that you have far too much negative space on the camera right side. That might work well if she were looking in that direction, but she is not, so a fairly significant crop on that side of the image is worth considering.

One other minor point - having the model look in a direction where her eyes are centred, giving an even distribution of the whites on either side of the iris often works better in a shot like this one.

I would also clean up some of the mottling we see on your model's arm.

From a pose standpoint, I would not have the hair running across her neck. That creates an unattractive "cut". Have the hair fall down her back and show the model's neck. Longer necks, shot from where you are shooting from make for more attractive portraits. I would also have asked your model to drop her left shoulder, again to accentuate the neck. The shoulder up that high is not working (it rarely does).

I went back and had another look at the image. The skin has a bit of a yellow / green cast. While I generally tend to err a bit on the warm side in portraits, I find with the cool tones in the background, adding in some magenta, to counter the green and a bit of blue to counter the yellow works well with the overall cool tone background.







Here is a screen shot of what I did in Photoshop.

[Dave Humphries]

As I had hoped, I have learnt a heap more from Manfred's reply

[joebranko]

Very interesting analysis.

[Craigie]

Fixing the whites of the eyes requires making a selection of them (I used the quick selection tool in Photoshop CC 2017) and removing both the blue and cyan using an adjustment layer in combination with a layer mask. As the parts of the bra have a very similar tone as the whites of the eyes do, I suspect they too have a significant cyan / blue cast. I used a similar approach as with the eyes, but found it easier to make the selection with the pen tool. The adjustment needs to be made to both the highlights and midtones - remember that you add red to reduce the cyan and add yellow to reduce the blue.

I find that I agree with the issues Dave has brought up as well. You shot this with a 50mm lens; that is far too short. On that crop frame Canon 6D used in the shot, I would definitely look at something closer to 80mm or 90mm as the shortest focal length I would use and that would eliminate the distortion issues.

I also don't like the way the bottom camera right side of your subject's clothing fade into the background. Either a rim light or a background light to cause some separation there would fix that little issue.

I also find that you have far too much negative space on the camera right side. That might work well if she were looking in that direction, but she is not, so a fairly significant crop on that side of the image is worth considering.

One other minor point - having the model look in a direction where her eyes are centred, giving an even distribution of the whites on either side of the iris often works better in a shot like this one.

I would also clean up some of the mottling we see on your model's arm.

From a pose standpoint, I would not have the hair running across her neck. That creates an unattractive "cut". Have the hair fall down her back and show the model's neck. Longer necks, shot from where you are shooting from make for more attractive portraits. I would also have asked your model to drop her left shoulder, again to accentuate the neck. The shoulder up that high is not working (it rarely does).

I went back and had another look at the image. The skin has a bit of a yellow / green cast. While I generally tend to err a bit on the warm side in portraits, I find with the cool tones in the background, adding in some magenta, to counter the green and a bit of blue to counter the yellow works well with the overall cool tone background.

It appears in your post Manfred, that your are saying that the Canon 6D is a cropped sensor camera when in fact it is a full frame camera.

[Manfred M]

It appears in your post Manfred, that your are saying that the Canon 6D is a cropped sensor camera when in fact it is a full frame camera.

Oops - I Googled 5D not 6D (sorry I don't know the Canon nomenclature offhand). I'm going to correct my original post.

Thanks for pointing out my error. Shooting this close on a 50mm lens is not going to give good results on a FF body. I find that the 80mm is a bit marginal and I do most of my portraits with either a 105mm or a 70-200mm lens on a FF body.

[Toothtek]

Thank You All!!

I was testing the new 24-105 L, I like it so far... guess my eye liked the 50mm range.. This was the first... Practice!!
I do appreciate the comments and will pursue these thoughts.

-Mitch