Fishing with Dad

[Frog]

Cropped, color adjustments, cloned.
All comments welcome!

[Overbeyond]

Both of these are really lovely but I do feel that they may be oversaturated; especially the first one. The positioning is very good with some nice bonding between Dad and child.

[Greg McCary]

I agree with Tom that they look way over saturated but the composition is great. Nice capture and one for the family album.
Greg

[Frog]

I'm still a beginner at editing and for some reason didn't think to work with saturation as I figured they were saturated enough,(obviously), and after reading your comments it dawned on me that I could probably lessen saturation. Duh!
Are these any better?

[Frog]

Anyone?
Might have desaturated the first one too much.
Strange about two of my sons; their faces always come out red.

[jkriminger]

hey Frog..not sure what program your using but I always start with the levels, brightness/contrast before messing with the hue/saturation.

[Ronnoco]

I suggest you take a look at 'Colour Correction For Digital Photographers Only" which is a book available at some of the larger book stores in the Photography section.

What it comes down to, is that there are all kinds of methods for improving colour without using the saturation control whatsoever. Unfortunately increasing saturation via the control also increases colour noise and leads to other problems.

Also by the way the critique comment of over-saturation is often over-used and inappropriate too. If there were truly something wrong with rich colours, Kodachrome film would have gone off the market decades ago. The over-saturated comment is often heard from black and white enthusiasts with a limited understanding of the use of colours in photography.

So, bottom line is that there was nothing wrong with your goal of rich colours, but you were a little too "heavy-handed' with the adjustment and you used the wrong approach.

Ronnoco

[dbutler]

To me it doesn't appear to be a saturation problem as much as that the images are just too warm. I think that both may look better in B&W. Just MO, of course.

[GB1]

Not sure if you did this or it's just the way it came out, but irregardless they definitely seem oversaturated to me. His beard, uhh.. I think that really looks crazy man! The adjusted lower sat one with the fishing pole is nice, needs a little sharpening & maybe a little mood added in with some PS tools. It looks like she liked you taking the shots.

GB

[Didache]

Nice shots that I'm sure dad would be very happy with for the album. Re the saturation thing: I do agree that the originals were a little heavy handed. For myself (if this helps) I always leave the saturation adjustment until nearly last, and I tend to err on the cautious side. Also, I find that greens and oranges tend to be the benchmark - I adjust to get the grass right and, usually, the other colours fall into place.

Cheers
Mike

[CLKunst]

Frog~

You've got some good moments here. For the sake of discussion would you mind posting your uncorrected [original] versions so we can see what you were trying to compensate for in the first place? It would certainly help me give you a better informed suggestion about how to edit these properly or what to do for next time so you can shoot it clean and save yourself the editing work.

Best,

[Frog]

Thankyou all for help and advice. If it makes a dif, I'm using pse 5.0
I actually don't think I did anything with saturation in the first set.
My sons face always shows up quite red...part of that rudy outdoor look I guess but it doesn't look good in photos. I had nice even cloudy light most of the day until the sun decided to make brief appearance for these shots.
Here are the un edited except for resize.

[CLKunst]

OK! That's more like it! I was really afraid to comment just in case your son had some sort of skin condition or natural discoloration on his face. Here are a couple good rules of thumb for photo editing.

First, consider that an image editor, even PSE, is actually a VERY powerful tool, like a laser, so a light touch is always the best approach. It's very easy to over do it and take a picture that was fine to begin with and turn into a psychedelic experience. Unless that's what you're going for.

Second, outside of small blemishes, wrinkles and zits, I try to stay FAR AWAY from selectively correcting portions of a subject's face beyond any "improvements" they might specifically request. There is no easy way to do what you are trying to do. By "normalizing" his coloring using the selection brush with broad strokes it will always come out looking disfigured and blotchy, in short, unrealistic. PSE does have a wonderful little feature under the Enhance menu called "Adjust for Skin Color". This feature adjusts the entire color balance of the picture based on selection of a specific point on the subject's skin (the pinkest point). If your son's face really feels redder than natural for you try playing with this feature and do a little read up on it in the Help section. I would also suggest trying out the "Remove Color Cast" feature also located in the same drop down menu. It works best when the selection point is a spot of true black, white, or grey. And if all else fails, (Ronnoco's gonna hate me double for suggesting this. J/K Ron!) Convert it to black and white and turn that ruddy red grey!! But that's another lesson.

Third, never make grand dramatic changes like this directly to your actual image as this causes deterioration of the file info and degrades image quality which translates into ugly print. Try out major edits in a duplicate layer or four as you can adjust the density of the layers and you don't get so much noise and loss.

As a critique of your photos, not your editing, I think your originals are worlds better. They look more natural and therefore believable, which is more important than color saturation when you are using a picture to communicate or document instead of conveying an "artistic" concept. You just want to take beautiful pictures right? It's a bummer on the first one that your son's eyes are closed but it's still a sweet moment. I agree with the crop you made on the second picture although it looks sharper in context of the whole even if it is cluttered perhaps you can give it a little tweak with the Unsharp Mask. I still think you have some great moments here and would suggest a contrast adjustment to both and possibly a warming filter to add the illusion of a hint of sunshine to counteract the grayness of the day. You can find the warming filter (and others cool filters as well) under the Filters drop down menu, then select Adjustments, Photo Filters is at the bottom of the list.

Send me a PM if you have any other questions.

Best,

[gahspidy]

Frog, in your first images posted, whatever you did in post processing gave the pictures a very unnatural appearance and a sort of "posterizing" effect especially on Dads beard area. This can happen from moving the saturation slider up way too much, and/or from many other treatments in PS. If your not sure what you did, none of us are either. . .
I agree with Cindy in that the unedited versions look best, other than the poor lighting on Dad in the bottom picture.
I notice that in your cameras settings, you have the contrast, saturation, and sharpness settings all at "2" This means that the software built into the camera is already applying increases in these areas, which may or may not be needed. Perhaps that may be a reason why your son's face comes out red often. Try leaving those settings at "0" and do a basic adjustment in Curves or Levels later on in Photoshop. Photoshop is better at performing these edits than the in-camera software.
I like the moments captured in both shots, and the crop in the second image was a good idea. I would leave the crop a bit looser though.

[CLKunst]

Duh! Thanks Gary! I didn't even think to check the EXIF info on these as I assumed it had all been done in PSE! You're absolutely right there! Those kind of settings in a cooler light setting will turn even a slightly pinky person ruddy red! Great point!

[Frog]

I didn't even realize that my sharpness, saturation, and contrast were set at two.
I probably did it when I was experimenting and then forgot. Doh!
Again I thankyou all for the help.
I'm aware of the things I can do under the enhance menu. I need more practice obviously.
Maybe I'll have to break down and buy a book like Ron suggests instead of the just, "hmm...I wonder what this does?"

[Xia_Ke]

Frog, you may want to check out Ken Rockwells quick set up guide for the D80 http://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d80/users-guide/index.htm . I went through his guide for the D50 and it helped a lot to get used to the camera and it's settings.