Cropping

[chrisjlee]

I'm not very good at portraits & i didn't know about the rule of avoid cutting off limbs. I still want to keep the loose composition; but i want to save this picture any suggestions?

http://static.flickr.com/33/51774268_17b351e0ab_o.jpg


I would also like to keep that little green fringe out of the picture which is at the bottom of the frame.

[chrisjlee]

cool. :uhoh

[DavidTO]

Chris,

Nice shot. It lacks pop, which is easily fixed in post. I opened it and avoided doing everything in LAB, but just stuck to basic RGB changes.

Here's what I got:

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40212222-L.jpg


And here's what I did. First I adjusted the curves so they looked like this:

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40212164-M.jpg

I then boosted saturation and applied photo filter 81 at around 25% opacity (don't remember exactly). I then set the crop to 10x8 and cropped a bit tighter, which I think helps.

[DavidTO]

Home, bored with a bad back, I tried this in LAB as well, and ended up with this (no crop in this version):

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215301-M.jpg

Here are the curves. Notice that the B curve I moved the center point over to bring up the yellow, since her skin had too much magenta relative to yellow. I also made a little move in the blue to take out the blue cast on her shirt, from the sky.

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215312-M.jpg http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215330-M.jpg http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215343-M.jpg

[chrisjlee]

Home, bored with a bad back, I tried this in LAB as well, and ended up with this (no crop in this version):

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215301-M.jpg

Here are the curves. Notice that the B curve I moved the center point over to bring up the yellow, since her skin had too much magenta relative to yellow. I also made a little move in the blue to take out the blue cast on her shirt, from the sky.

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215312-M.jpg http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215330-M.jpg http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/40215343-M.jpg
Thanks. A lot. I'm beginning to understand the whole LAB processing. Hope your back feels better.

[Andy]

while not absolute, a general rule of thumb is to chop a limb midway between the joints. so, you did fine :thumb

[chrisjlee]

while not absolute, a general rule of thumb is to chop a limb midway between the joints. so, you did fine :thumb
ah alright thanks. had no idea.
i think it was you who told me "midway between the joints"