I don’t know why it’s so incredibly difficult for me to figure out how to edit my pictures well. I’ve been playing around with being more daring with the sharpening, contrast, and tone curve lately, and I think it’s helping. But again, I’m not really sure. I honestly feel like I can’t tell when I make a picture better or worse. Je suis frustree! Anyway, I added a lot of contrast, sharpening, lighting, and warming up of Phila’s pics…can someone give me some feedback? Does it look over edited now? Is this a hopeless cause? These pics were really hard to work with for some reason…
Camera: Canon t2i
Lens: Canon 24-70mmL
Postprocessing: Lightroom 3
Need feedback? Pedro to the rescue! Because I love pretending that I know that I’m talking about…
Right off the bat, basic feedback – your editing definitely improved most of the pictures. They look good, and it’s definitely not a hopeless cause! Nice job experimenting.
Two things stand out to me as I look at these, which you may or may not be doing… so I’ll mention them just in case. First, I rarely touch the contrast in Lightroom, because I generally prefer the finer controls of Exposure/Recovery/Fill/Blacks, or to use the Highlights/Lights/Darks/Shadows controls. There are times when playing with contrast helps, but usually I don’t need it. Second, Vibrance vs. Saturation – with portraits, Vibrance is usually more useful than saturation because it doesn’t push the skin into weird colors. I use both, but am cautious in using saturation. Also with portraits, sometimes I’ll lower the saturation on the oranges and yellows (and sometimes red) so I can get brighter colors without affecting the face.
For more specific feedback, maybe a quick trip down the list?
1. Good improvement over the original. Maybe a tad too much contrast or saturation for my taste, but some people really prefer this look. So still good.
2. I might have bumped up the Fill Light just a bit for his face, but otherwise it looks great!
3. I like.
4. This one looks good! There might be a bit too much orange/yellow in the face, but because the wall is so red his face seems pale in comparison, so it’s pretty hard to tell. I like this one.
5. & 6. – Same for both of these… overall, the adjustments help the images, but it shows too much on his face. He looks too orangish-yellowish on both of them. You could lower the saturation overall, or decrease only the orange, and you’d be fine.
7. Love it. I think you saved the best for last.
Keep experimenting, it’s good!
Thanks so much, Peter! I really appreciate it! I should post up more of these feedback required posts so you can critique.
I cannot tell the difference, but its still awesome. And picture #2, somethign looks funny about the color of my face, cannot really pinpoint what.
general thoughts:
1. make sure that whatever you do serves the fact of whatever the photo’s doing. these are portraits, so any editing should improve the attention on his face (e.g.: be careful with saturation cuz the bricks should NOT command the same amount of attention [or more] as his face).
2. his skin kinda changes color/tone throughout these. watch out for that; it’s so distracting.