Another Portrait

[Digital]

C&C welcomed. Shot in mixed lighting. I realize there is a hair over her (camera right) eye; however I like the casual look.
Bruce

[Shadowman]

Nice one.

[Manfred M]

Why the heavy red / magenta colour cast?

[Geoff F]

The rather red colour appearance was also my first thought.

When there is that much 'misplaced' hair, Bruce, it looks OK; the problem comes when there are just a few straggly strands.

[rpcrowe]

Lovely lady! I would try the following:

1. Correct the color cast as mentioned above.
2. Eliminate the blemish on her chin and below the left rim of her glasses (image right)
3. Brighten the teeth and eyes just a bit
4. And, just perhaps, add a slight vignette to the overall image...

Some folks are against editing portraits but, I like to reduce/eliminate transitory problems like blemishes and problems that might be caused by the lighting (such as shadows on the teeth)

[Manfred M]

+1 to your suggestions Richard. I always discuss the level of retouching I will do with my subjects after the shoot. Some are fine with it and others look at using Photoshop as the world's greatest evil.

Other things I will do is some basing sculpting of facial features (burning and dodging), making the lips a bit more intense, removal of a few stray hairs (that is one I don't discuss and do automatically) and softening of wrinkles.

[ST1]

Nice work Manfred, whilst I have no experience of portrait photography I do admire those that create work of this quality. My only thoughts on this image is around your choice of crop/ framing. The detail in the subjects hair is great but you chose to restrict the right side (as viewed) the landscape photographer in me likens this to an element within an image that maybe deserves more room IYSWIM.


Sent from somewhere in Gods County using Tapatalk

[Digital]

Why the heavy red / magenta colour cast?

Manfred, I wondered about the WB on this shot. The closet I could duplicate your example of WB is tungsten. If I may be blunt: your choice of WB makes parts of her hair green, at least on my monitor.


Bruce

[Digital]

I just thought of something. These shots were made inside at a local restaurant. I bounced the flash against a red oval that surrounded the bar where these shots were made. This "may' account for the reddish tint in this photo.


Bruce

[Saorsa]

Manfred, I wondered about the WB on this shot. The closet I could duplicate your example of WB is tungsten. If I may be blunt: your choice of WB makes parts of her hair green, at least on my monitor.


Bruce

She is blonde so the green may come from removing a tad too much red (red and green make yellow) while trying to get the right skin color. It might be helped by not doing the red reduction on the overall image.

Here is an attempt where I reduced Gamma just a bit to brighten and then added red to reduce the green. There is still a bit in the shadows.

[Digital]

Is this any better?

[Cantab]

She is blonde so the green may come from removing a tad too much red (red and green make yellow) while trying to get the right skin color. It might be helped by not doing the red reduction on the overall image.

Here is an attempt where I reduced Gamma just a bit to brighten and then added red to reduce the green. There is still a bit in the shadows.

The WB in Brian's version looks the best on my monitor. I haven't profiled my monitor for a couple of months so it may be slightly out of whack. But I note that others than myself see a greenish tinge in Manfred's version.

Manfred, I've just remembered that your traveling and that the display on your traveling laptop may not be accurately profiled?

Bruce, I think your guess about the cause of the WB issue is correct:

I just thought of something. These shots were made inside at a local restaurant. I bounced the flash against a red oval that surrounded the bar where these shots were made. This "may' account for the reddish tint in this photo.

Edit: Bruce, you posted a reworked version of the portrait while I was typing my post. To my eye, your latest version is an improvement over the original but has a coppery tinge to it.

[Digital]

Better?

[Saorsa]

Yes.

[Otavio]

Is this any better?

Hello, Bruce. It's a very nice portrait, nicely done. Regarding the tone, this is the best version posted in this thread, IMHO. The first one was really a bit on the red side, but this one fixes it. Cheers

[Manfred M]

She is blonde so the green may come from removing a tad too much red (red and green make yellow) while trying to get the right skin color. It might be helped by not doing the red reduction on the overall image.

Here is an attempt where I reduced Gamma just a bit to brighten and then added red to reduce the green. There is still a bit in the shadows.

No. You are using the RGB colour model.

To remove red one adds cyan, to remove green, add magenta and to remove blue add yellow.

The other issue is that we are working on a jpeg image rather than a raw file, so the white balance is baked in, so getting a clean image is much trickier.

My laptop has been calibrated and profiled, but even a small change in the angle of view changes things a bit so absolute accuracy is tricky.

[Manfred M]

Better?

Still much too red with a bit of yellow too. I prefer portraits slightly warm, but not this much. That being said, I don't trust my laptop because the colours are not as good as on my desktop display (which cost me more than this laptop). I'll have a look at it there when I get home towards the end of next week to see what I think then.

Have you tried shooting these with a neutral target for a reference shot? That tends to make getting the WB fairly easy, assuming that the lighting is not too strange. One click WB correction.

[rpcrowe]

Here's my input...

In addition to the steps I listed above, I also applied the NIK Color Efex Skin Softener...



However, this appears more red than it does in either Photoshop or Smugmug on my monitor....

[Geoff F]

Better?

After looking at all the options with the Lightbox view, this is the best one for me.

[Merlin52]

Smugmug have a very good article on correcting skin tones (prior to printing, but it applies to monitor images ) .

"Use the eyedropper tool of your software eg 5x5 sample area of subjects' skin; only look at the CMYK values; then most all you need to know is that you can never let the yellow % fall below magenta % on anyone's skin unless you're trying to show sunburn !. Cyan should be about a third of the Magenta value"

Here's a link to the PDF article (I use the "Easy" correction method) - free download --> http://help.smugmug.com/customer/por...3363?b_id=1644