Can't compete with Yuri

[3rdPlanetPhotography]

I can't compete with the quality of Yuri's photo enhancement abilities... but I can come up with a Russian girl... does this count??? Keep up the great work Yuri!!!

http://kc7dji.smugmug.com/photos/19755391-L.jpg

[Andy]

she's lovely :thumb nice work
maybe take it down some though, exposure wise?

[USAIR]

I can't compete with the quality of Yuri's photo enhancement abilities... but I can come up with a Russian girl... does this count??? Keep up the great work Yuri!!!

http://kc7dji.smugmug.com/photos/19755391-L.jpgYea I think it counts
Nice portrait beautiful subject too :wink

Thanks
Fred

[bfjr]

No need to compete, excellent shot stands on it's own :thumb
should be down by maybe 1 stop on front of face, but rutt will probably be along in a min. to fix it !! :ps

[3rdPlanetPhotography]

Thank you all for the comments. I'm sure it can be brought down some. This was my attempt at Photoshop (noob). It's only fair that I post the original so here it is.

http://kc7dji.smugmug.com/photos/19768614-M.jpg

[bfjr]

Dude, now that I see the original, you done real good :clap :thumb
Excellent crop, turned it into an entirely different image :lynnma

[david_h]

Dude, not that I see the original, you done real good :clap :thumb
Excellent crop, turned it into an entirely different image :lynnma I agree, the crop and other changes turn a regular snapshot into a rather nice portrait.

As mentioned already, if you could reduce the exposure a bit it would be even better. Nice job!

[DJ-S1]

Most of us mere mortals can't compete with Yuri! I thought I'd give this a try, glammed her up a bit. Maybe too much? Hope you don't mind. :D

http://daveorama.smugmug.com/photos/19778407-M.jpg

[rutt]

I think what people are telling you is that you have to start off by repairing the original image before you get creative with it. Your crop is great, but the original has a magenta cast and is overexposed. Start off by fixing it.

I applied shadow/highlights to recover the blown areas on her face, followed by CMYK curves to acheive a correct color balance on her face:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/19778860-L.jpg

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/19778824-S.jpg
http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/19778819-S.jpghttp://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/19780926-S.jpghttp://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/19780921-S.jpg

Ok, this isn't glamourous by a long stretch, but it's a lot more accurate. It has detail that you can use or throw away as you like.

Your transformation was to desaturate almost to the point of a B&W conversion. I took it all the way, just to show how to retain detail while desaturation. I just took the green channel from the above and got this:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/19778871-L.jpg

This can now serve as a starting place for the glamour moves if you want B&W. As a first step I used the healing brush to start to address her blemishes and the remaining highlight on her chin.

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/19778874-L.jpg

To finish the glamming, duplicate her into a second layer and blur the bottom layer (or use Neat Image or NN with very high parameters). Then use a layer mask to decrease the opacity of the unblurred top layer and let the smooth skin show, especially in places where her real skin is bothersome.

[rutt]

Most of us mere mortals can't compete with Yuri! I thought I'd give this a try, glammed her up a bit. Maybe too much? Hope you don't mind. :D

http://daveorama.smugmug.com/photos/19778407-M.jpg

Man, that's nice. I didn't see it before I posted. Mine is ugly, sort of on purpose, it's supposed to be a starting point. Looks like you got there and finished the job. Can you post the recipe, please?

[lynnma]

I think this is way too "doll like" over done on the blur.. she has no character or detail in her face.. I'd like to see it backed off a lot.:dunno

[rutt]

I think this is way too "doll like" over done on the blur.. she has no character or detail in her face.. I'd like to see it backed off a lot.:dunno

What I'd really like is for the people who are good at this to write a tutorial about making people look more beautiful. I'm only good at making them look ugly.

[DJ-S1]

I think this is way too "doll like" over done on the blur.. she has no character or detail in her face.. I'd like to see it backed off a lot.:dunno
Yup, I know but it's the fast way. I have an action I bought for this sort of thing which can be very good but you need to start with a clean image first. Rather than spend the time to clone the skin a bit I just went heavy enough to obscure it.

I'll take another stab at it soon to make her a bit more natural looking, and if it comes out okay I'll post a "recipe".

[wxwax]

Rutt, another great explanation. :thumb

[thegreenegg]

Hello,
I've been looking over the site recently and learning some things about post-processing. Everyone I've seen talks in Photoshop code but I'm using a very user friendly Jasc Paintshop and I find I'm getting pretty good results and can find most the things mentioned in Photoshop speak. So, I took a stab at the post-processing on this one with my program. Hope you like it, just did it in about 15 minutes.
Ashley

[Andy]

Most of us mere mortals can't compete with Yuri! I thought I'd give this a try, glammed her up a bit. Maybe too much? Hope you don't mind. :D

http://daveorama.smugmug.com/photos/19778407-Ti.jpg

dj - too much - too doll-like, mannequin like. remember, in photoshop, 9% is your friend :D

[DJ-S1]

So here's a more realistic looking version:

http://daveorama.smugmug.com/photos/19803387-M.jpg

Now I don't like the cheek, but I don't believe PS7 has the "shadow /highlight" tool so I couldn't follow Rutt's technique for that. And my monitor isn't color calibrated so I'm usually too red. But here's what I did:

-Rotate CW 20 degrees and crop
-Cloned out a few blemishes
-Ran the action - it's called Softar; it's for "glamour shots". After looking through the steps it basically chooses skin-toned areas and gaussian blurs them as much as you want. Then it ends with the history brush so you can go back and remove the blur from the eyes, lips, etc.
- made a copy of the background layer (ctrl-j)
- changed it's blending to "overlay" and it's opacity to taste, I think 45% in this case. This pumps up the saturation, I think?
- flatten layers
- made another copy of the background layer
- applied unsharp mask to this layer
- applied a layer mask so that only her eyes and lips were sharpened

Obviously I'm no expert, this is just what my process is right now. I'm still learning from the gurus here all the time. Especially Rutt these days, great tutorials! :thumb

[DJ-S1]

dj - too much - too doll-like, mannequin like. remember, in photoshop, 9% is your friend :D:nod I think the new one is better, except for the cheek.

[wxwax]

Hello,
I've been looking over the site recently and learning some things about post-processing. Everyone I've seen talks in Photoshop code but I'm using a very user friendly Jasc Paintshop and I find I'm getting pretty good results and can find most the things mentioned in Photoshop speak. So, I took a stab at the post-processing on this one with my program. Hope you like it, just did it in about 15 minutes.
Ashley
You did a nice job, Ashley. :thumb