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Hi all,
This is my first serious attempt at portraiture and I would appreciate some honest critique please.
Lighting was indirect sunlight from the window at an angle of about 30 degrees to my left. about 50% of this is diffused through drawing film. I also held a bit of white paper (A4 folded into 3) about 22" from my face with a convex curve in it, angled up slightly and at about 45 degrees to my right.
The picture was taken in RAW using RGB Adobe (1998), all automatic adjustments were turned off. I have corrected for camera distortion, vignetting and croma and I have adjusted the temperature slightly as the original was a bit cool. I have also applied correction for colour noise and luminance All editting to this point was done in Photoshop Bridge.
I cropped the image and converted it in Photoshop CS5.
V1 has had the contrast tweeked slightly in curves and V2 hasn't.
V3 is the uneditted original.
On converting to JPG the colours were very dull and I have increased the saturation of V1 & V2 quite severely to get over this. Can anyone comment on why this should be necessary please.
Thank you in advance for your comments, advice, and criticism. I am sure I shall find it very helpful.
Even if you don't leave c+c, thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy it.
All the best
James
| Title: | Me |
| Username: | 
James_C |
| Uploaded: | 12 Sep 2011 - 9:23 PM |
| Camera: | Canon EOS 5D |
| Lens: | EF24-105mm F/4L IS USM |
| Recording media: | RAW (digital) |
| Date Taken: | 12 Sep 2011 - 4:45 PM |
| Tags: | Flash / lighting, General, Portraits / people |
| Votes: | Voting Disabled |
 | Critique Wanted |
| Modifications Welcome (Upload a Modification) |
 | Variant - Before and After |
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Comments
Knowing practically nothing about portrait work, I am in no position to pass judgement but I do think that the skin tone looks good, the colours stand out well, the lighting works to give a very nice, natural feel to the image and there's good eye contact. Rather nice meeting you too!! Should have said, good crop of the original and I think probably V2 gets the nod from me!
Ann
Yes.
Two likely reasons. You have not assigned the sRGB colour space to the image, - your left it with Adobe RGB; and if you use Internet Explorer to view the uploaded images, - its will read the colours incorrectly.
heres a link to check your browser:
http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html
The actual conversion of the colour space should be done in Photoshop as part of the upload for web process; and the PPI should be set to 72, before you re size. Then after saving for web, - open the new image, check for sharpness, and apply as needed. re sizing can cause loss of detail due to file compression.
The image exposure looks good, - though to be honest I would have used f/8 and a faster speed, than f/18. You risked loss of sharpness, - and having to sit extremely still for 0.6 seconds!
OK, - so I modified you original shot, V3. You arbitrarily set the white balance, - and we often do this, BUT you are way better off calibrating it especially when shooting RAW. Using the white piece of paper, - set in on the chair in the same light, take a shot of it in RAW and AWB, - you may need to manual focus, - and then proceed with your session. When you process the RAW files, open the white shot first, select the white balance tool, click it on the *****, and take a look at the white balance settings. Apply these to all shots taken in the same light.
Ive obviously cropped as you did; applied quite a bit of sharpening; and the main change is in the colour tone. I have no idea what the real colour of the wall behind you is, but the technique I use suggests its more yellow than white?
heres a link to the technique:
http://www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=24
Hope this helps, - and if it doesnt answer your question, and you still have a problem, - let us know or send me a PM.
regards
Willie
Just another thought James. I assume you got to JPEG by changing the Mode to 8 bits, then save-as, and selected the file type as JPEG?
This should not have had any effect on colour. So first check that you do not have View Proof Colours set to ON. Its under the view menu.
let me know how you get on.
W
Some expert advice above James. To me, this is a natural self-portrait, well taken with good light.
Carol
Many many thanks to you all and particularly to Willie (banehawi). Your thoughts and comments are very much appreciated.
Firstly, I am new to Photoshop and am on a steep learning curve. This has been a most useful lesson for me as, although I new I was experiencing a colour shift when converting to JPG I had no idea why - now I do and I have learnt a lot from the link to gballard.nett, which is now in my browser favorites so that I can go back to it and drum the knowledge more firmly into my brain.
With regard to your after thought Willie, I originally saved a full sized file to JPG at 300dpi. I then used Picasa to resize for posting and it was in this process that bit depth was converted from 16 to 8 and dpi changed rom 300 to 72.
V4 (added with this message) has been saved and converted from the CR2 (RAW) file to JPG at 72dpi/8bit using Photoshop CS5's "Save for Web & Devices...". The colours are now correct. Again thank you for the lesson.
I am also interested in your other link to dpchallenge.com, which I shall digest later.
Finally your advice re white balance has been noted and I shall re-do this exercise adopting your technique. I have a set of Kodak grey cards - would I get the best results by setting the camera's white balance for this exercise from these first?
Thanks again to you all.
James
James a super attempt. In addition to what has already been suggested I would add that you should ensure that the eyes of the model are in the upper third of the picture space and watch the background and you have part of a distracting dado rail however I like the image sufficiently well to give it a vote.
Hi James - lovely to see you.
I like this soft, gentle, natural view of you - I cannot comment on the technical side of things ot as I know nothing about such things -- but I do like this image.
No doubt the Master (Willie) has said all there is to say and I am going to bookmark this page as it is so full of useful info - so many thanks for that.
I look forward to your next portrait with interest.
Sues
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