Girl in a Tree

[laurapatterson]

I have this picture I really like, but am wondering what you might suggest for improvements. Thanks!

[canasta]

I'm playing about with duotone and tritones at the moment
Not sure if it works with this image.

In Photoshop CS4
Image> Calculations
Mixing Red channel with Red channel
Then greyscale it to flatten the image

Then go to Image>Duotone and load a tritone:
Bl WmGray 7 WmGray 2.ADO
(which can be tricky to find but is pre-installed with PS)

They do print off fantastic though in this tonal range.

(Had to convert it back to RGB in order to get filesize requirement for forum upload so has lost a little of the effect)

Actually...now that I compare the before (with colour) and my B&W tonal....yours is much better. The colours are superb - so why spoil them?

[Pat]

Hi Laura. Nice pic. Personally I would have liked to see a little more at the bottom of the frame (ie- not have the elbow clipped off). Other than that, most , if not all pics right out of the camera will benefit from a little post production tweaking vis-a-vis contrast, sharpness, saturation, light levels, and perhaps cropping.
The first here is your original (for quick comparison purposes). In the second I've masked the subject (to isolate her from the background) and made her a little brighter. I then reversed the selection and darkened the background slightly. I then removed colour except green , applied bleach bypass filter then a very slight blur.
The next two had Virtual Photographer's halo filter applied along with a slight boost in contrast with the last one softened with a blur.
The latter two were also cropped and enlarged.
Looking forward to seeing more from you.

[jayne]

Oooh, nice pic!

Here's my play. Very quickly, I ran an USM, popped the colours, smoothed her skin and brightened it up slightly.

Yours first for comparison.

[laurapatterson]

Wow, thanks! Pat, I really like the B/W version with keeping the green. It's subtle, but makes a really nice impact. Jayne, That looks great too. How did you get the colors to pop like that? I'm kinda new-ish to photography, but extremely new to editing. I have gimp for now because I can't commit to any one program just yet - there's so many, and for the price ranges, I want to make a good choice.

[julimucca]

This was a fun picture to do overlays with, but then again, I am obessessed with overlays on so many different levels though too.lol :)
I have a few lake pictures that I took last summer, that I used for the lake effect ones. I used gimp for a while too, loved it, and when I got pselements 7 finally, I actually had a realy hard time with it. I have been figuring out elements a lot more though and now I love it. So if you want something affordable with a lot of fun stuff on it, elements is a good way to go, and I got mine off of ebay for $50. If I remember right overlays in Gimp are pretty easy to figure out.
I used a few different overlays on these, and erased the parts of the overlay that I didn't like, particularly on the girl and the closer foilage, but I also, added some backlight in photoscape (which you can download for free on the internet)and I added a velvia and portra filter, after the overlays were added, and with how soft the pictures are, I realy liked the rounder frames better too.
Thanks for sharing your picture! Editing is almost more fun to me than the photography! : )
The last picture is yours for reference. I realy liked how the overlays, opened up the backgrounds.

[StephenK]

Put this one under the heat lamp! :^)

[StephenK]

Using the Fractalius plug-in by Redfield.... :^)

[jayne]

Jayne, That looks great too. How did you get the colors to pop like that?

Just seen this (6 months later), but I don't want you to think I ignored you (haven't really been around).

Anyway, my pp'ing has changed since I did this, but I think I ran a soft light layer. I had CS4 at the time, have now upgraded to CS5 and LOVE it!! :D