My little goofball

This is one of my favorite shots of my girls together I took around their 3rd birthday. Things I like: their expressions and lighting. Things I don't like: ISO 400 so a bit noisy and doesn't look very sharp (who knows what the G2 was focusing on), I need to iron better and Erika has no hands!

I figure that I may be able to improve sharpness and background issue with photoshop (haven't done too much in that department so I may be back in help forum). I'm not there's anything I can do with the chopped body parts.

Comments/suggestions?

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Originally Posted by 2kids2shoot

This is one of my favorite shots of my girls together I took around their 3rd birthday. Things I like: their expressions and lighting. Things I don't like: ISO 400 so a bit noisy and doesn't look very sharp (who knows what the G2 was focusing on), I need to iron better and Erika has no hands!

I figure that I may be able to improve sharpness and background issue with photoshop (haven't done too much in that department so I may be back in help forum). I'm not there's anything I can do with the chopped body parts.

Comments/suggestions?

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Gorgeous girls!
I tried cropping, taking out some of the reddish tint and bumping up the contrast a bit.
Used Adobe photoshop elements 2.0.
Hope you don't mind.
Experiment with your photoshops, trial, error, and frustration that's how I learned.
There is also a lot of good help on this site.

In the future, you may want to use a slower ISO for portraits. You might consider using the higher speeds only when you really need them when shooting digital. I'm no digital guru, but I know others who have gone digital and have the same reservations about ISO 400+.

I don't shoot portraits, but I think this photo has definite possibilities. It just takes a little digital darkroom magic. You may want to try a product like Neat Image (www.neatimage.com) to get rid of the noise. I use it, it works great, is very easy to use, and the demo version is free. It may tend to soften things a bit, so I also use Focal Blade (www.thepluginsite.com) to sharpen my images, but you can, if you're careful, get good results with Photoshop's Unsharp Mask. Don't make it too sharp or the noise will creep back in. Anyway, I understand that softness in portrait photography is preferred (?). The pose is just too good to give up on, so keep playing with Photoshop and augment it with a bit more software, and you'll make this even more adorable.

Good luck,
Paul

used an aqua colored filter and sharpened(unsharp mask)
then went to edit and fiddled with the luminosity then despeckled and spot sharpened individual areas (eyes, features, hairlines)

and cloned out wrinkles in material

what little hammies you have here...they are going to provide you with ENDless photo ops especially the little chickadee on the left-lol

Thanks for all your suggestions on post-processing (and the reposts). I especially appreciate the details. I have Photoshop but I get pretty overwheled with what seems like 20 different ways to do similar things. I'm definately going to have to figure out lighting situation (sounds like a trek to lighting forum to soak up some wisdom) . I don't have enough natural light so often shoot at ISO 400. Not too bad for casual shots but not good enough for the more portait type. Thanks again.

Sharon