Two Quick Portriats of Sam

[Don Schaeffer]

Sam is my first great nephew. The first is Sam with his mother at Salsbury House Restaurant. The second is Sam with my son, Marc at the zoo.

[jbaldocchi]

Hi Don,

Sam is a handsome young man. Your images seem quite contrasty I would try to soften them up. Did you paste him into these pictures? I notice a wierd kind of outline of Sam in both of your pictures. I like that you're experimenting.

Jim B.

[LeeIs]

Hey Don, the 2nd is a naturally better photo. I'm not a big fan of manupilation, especially if one can't make it unnoticeable.

The work on these is very noticeable to me and takes away from the quality of the photos specially the 2nd one where you had a great shot to begin with.

[Don Schaeffer]

Very reasonable criticisms. I had too much depth of field in the color photo I took these from. The error comes in trying to create a blurry background. The line between child and rock was burned out when I added contrast so I tried to draw in that line. Verry crude I know.

[LeeIs]

I got you Don. There's an easier/more flexible technique to get the DOF or the background blurry. just 4 easy steps.

if you're using PhotoShop.

1. Duplicate your original layer. Top Menus - Layer - Duplicate Layer. or just drag your layer icon on top of the "new icon button" at buttom of the layers palette.



2. Then Blur that layer as much as you wanted to blur the background.

3. Make a mask for the new layer. Drag the layer icon on to the "layer mask" button at the bottom of the layers palette.


4. Your background /foreground colours will change to black and white. Just paint black where ever you want the original kid and father to show throw. Don't worry if you make a mistake and go too far, just choose white and paint over your mistakes.

That's it. This way, you can alway refine without messing with the actual photo. Just keep switching from white to black and so forth to fix the mistakes.

once you start using the mask more. You should never go back to erasing stuff. Because once you erase you can't just unerase without going back and undoing. With the Mask you can erase and get it back whenever you want by choosing the other colour/ B or W.

Hope that helped.

[Don Schaeffer]

Thanks for your help. I never did master masks and layers. I have a lot to learn about photoshop. I use photoshop 6 and MGI Photosuite.