# My daughter



## NickTB (Feb 4, 2007)

Here's one I took yesterday of my six month old daughter whilst testing out my new combo Sony A55 and Sony 50mm f1.4. I'm liking this already!


Francesca by NickTB, on Flickr

I also posted this on TP. If anyone has any ideas on how I can improve on this it would be great.

Cheers,


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## Gruffs (Dec 10, 2007)

Loving the Bokeh!

Needs a lift in levels but she's a bonnie little thing.


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## spursfan (Aug 4, 2009)

great colours Nick, depth of field really pinpoints the face:thumb:

Kev


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## bretti_kivi (Apr 22, 2008)

I think it's actually mildly oversaturated and might work well in B/W..... yes, it does work *very* nicely in B&W.

Bret


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## NickTB (Feb 4, 2007)

bretti_kivi said:


> I think it's actually mildly oversaturated and might work well in B/W..... yes, it does work *very* nicely in B&W.
> 
> Bret


I have PS CS5. How would you go about converting it? Just desaturating? or more?


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## bretti_kivi (Apr 22, 2008)

desaturate, I used an average of lightness and luminosity.
Then raise BP and lower WP (reduce contrast) and shift the midpoint to around .9. Combined with a quick USM, I get this: 

---- removed ----- 

which I have to say I quite like, especially as the food gets more exposure and it's a "who, me?" 

Bret


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## Ultra (Feb 25, 2006)

bretti_kivi said:


> desaturate, I used an average of lightness and luminosity.
> Then raise BP and lower WP (reduce contrast) and shift the midpoint to around .9. Combined with a quick USM, I get this:
> 
> 
> ...


Sorry, But that B&W pic is not good [ i am being very polite as well ]


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## NickTB (Feb 4, 2007)

I'm sorry Bret I have to agree with dennis too. It gives her lots of flaws in her skin that look like scars. I do respect your work, but on this occasion I think I prefer a less harsh B&W


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## A210 AMG (Nov 8, 2008)

Original pic for me... that's what you took

I'm not keen on PS things... its not the way you took it then.


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## bretti_kivi (Apr 22, 2008)

Fair enough, I've deleted it. I was interpreting more on the "you've disturbed me while I'm eating" angle. Actually, that looks *really* harsh now, and it wasn't what I intended. Don't quite get what happened there.... anyway, deleted.

As far as "No PS" is concerned... If you're not processing, you're missing out on 90% of the potential of your pics. Advice from here: learn the software, you will need it one day.

Bret

edit: I can't actually delete it? that's not good. I will look into this.


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## NickTB (Feb 4, 2007)

bretti_kivi said:


> Fair enough, I've deleted it. I was interpreting more on the "you've disturbed me while I'm eating" angle. Actually, that looks *really* harsh now, and it wasn't what I intended. Don't quite get what happened there.... anyway, deleted.
> 
> As far as "No PS" is concerned... If you're not processing, you're missing out on 90% of the potential of your pics. Advice from here: learn the software, you will need it one day.
> 
> Bret


I have the full CS5 suite. Would you suggest a YouTube tutorial or another source?


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## A210 AMG (Nov 8, 2008)

^ Maybe but if I take a picture I like to view the picture at that moment as I took it and they way it was seen.

Photoshop or similar has its place not always giving the best results as your edits showed?


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## bretti_kivi (Apr 22, 2008)

I process probably 10000 pics per year and I'm unhappy with quite a few of them. I get better the more I practice. What I saw and what I took a shot of and what I want to show aren't necessarily the same thing...

I'm only just getting to the point where I understand approximately how the settings I select on sharpness will affect the final result (which is also what will seriously change any texture, as that's _per se_ what sharpness is) and then the level and colour changes / value.
Then there's the value of layers and optimizing colours. I'm pretty sure it's this which overdid things - but I'm not sure. That or the BP....or a combo.

If you want a set of suggestions for stuff to work on, then at least for the moment, they're this (I'll ask our PS girl at work - she uses it a *lot* - for her thoughts tomorrow):
- work on understanding the effects that changing exposure has on RAW files
- understand the difference between the base curve and the luminosity curves and what the lum curve does to colours (it's significant!)
- work out what the histogram is showing in terms of relation to your overall exposure and the curves that are involved
- check just how much detail you can retrieve from shadows by anchoring the centre of the base curve and then pushing the lower left section - check with 100% crops where mud happens and where it stops looking natural
- repeat this with highlights and mid tones, I think you'll get a much better understanding of what you need to get right in-cam and what you can fix afterwards (even lighting is important, even if it's too dark)
- play with WB and check what calibration or not you're using. Work on a pic and come back to it later as eyes adjust to what they're seeing and pink can seem almost white after a while. Try maybe using a grey card to see how far off things are and begin to train yourself to understand the limitations of the camera's auto WB
- note how moving your WP and BP can really screw up the shadows. If you push it too hard to get more contrast it can be extremely obvious.

Take a couple of shots and deliberately process them over the top in different ways. Then repeat with some others and come back to them later and see what worked and what didn't; then repeat / tone down until you're reasonably happy you've got everything you could have from that shot. You should now know what is "wrong" with the shot and maybe you have another from the same set you can process armed with this knowledge...practice works really well for this and I can honestly say that after 60k RAW shots I'm 
*beginning* to be happy with what I can get out of them. And I understand a lot more about what I have to get right.

Within PS itself:
- selections are a nightmare. Try taking some vectorized graphics and select only part of it (to reduce it to two colours). What do the options in the tools do for you and how can you effectively select everything you need? Why you'll need this should be obvious: selections, masks and layers are essential tools. 
- This should help you to really understand about eyes, the circle of confusion and why sharpness works, because it's all about the antialiasing or not between objects. USM essentially works because it blurs and then re-sharpens. I'll explain this later.
- Remove some dust bunnies. Where can you clone from and how much should you do at a time? Do some real ones (sky is relatively simple). Zoom out to see how obvious it is. Don't underestimate the strength of new adjustment layers and varying their opacity afterwards. 
- Work on removing, say, a spot from skin, or some figurative tooth spinach. If you work too largely, you'll get overly smooth skin and if it's not enough, you will have a big red blob. This is to show you the light contours and help you to understand where to pull the clone from - and then heal it afterwards to help it blend in. By all means check out a couple of videos on this stuff, it's *not* easy.
- I'd also work on understanding some of the strange techniques to get more sharpness (including the one which uses edge-detection to help create a mask for sharpening, which is extremely useful if you've got a noisy image). 
Sharpness is a double-edged sword - too much highlights stuff you don't necessarily want and too little feels soft. Sometimes this is good, and exactly what you're looking for. Mostly it's not, but USM can be extremely harsh. I'd suggest experimenting with a couple of shots which you think are reasonably sharp anyway and working with the different USM settings to see how far you can and should push it - if at all. I know the K5 doesn't seem to need much sharpening and it's much harsher on small pics than big ones. 
Essentially, from here, USM appears to compare a set of pixels and increase the contrast between them slightly. Say from 10 - 8 - 10 to 12 - 5 - 12. Most of the time this works well (and if you use bigger numbers, up to a certain point the results will be better) but it can overdo things and you end up with a halo. I'm not 100% sure why this is and I'll have to look it up at some point in the very near future.

PS is not something I'm completely comfortable with, I use GIMP and even then, I use it probably 4-5 times per week and I still don't feel I have a complete handle on what I should. Creating the logo in Inkscape was great, as was messing with some vectorised graphics, as it showed me a lot of the value of this selection stuff, and then some tricks with inverting, grayscale and edge detection. I'd understood just how difficult it can be to do some JPG stuff when someone dumped a couple on me to "edit"... ha ha, that took hours. The practice seriously paid off there, but I'd probably re-do them again if I had an opportunity.

HtH.

Bret


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