Comments on: Welcome to Kill My Pics

By: Fusion

Fusion — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:54:06 +0000

I like this picture, the ghostly images within the pic, even yourself , are well done. The image has great potential and with a little PS as suggested could be greatly improved.

PS I disagree with an earlier comment about the image being to busy, this IMO is what give it its impact. Ian

By: Yulia

Yulia — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:28:54 +0000

Hi Dana!
I’m not a professional…but, I can see you on that picture(in a red sweater)… I don’t know if that good or not….I know for sure, you are doing great job!!! Good Luck!!!!

By: dana_h79

dana_h79 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:38:30 +0000

Wow!
Louis people like you and Daniel are the reason I believe this blog can be a great learning tool for people.

I also want to thank you for taking the time to write such a great and detailed reply and I will do my best to follow it and post the picture after the PS touch up (no promises there).

By: studiophototrope

studiophototrope — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:47:16 +0000

Dana,
Ok…a little photoshop is not enough photoshop. Get in there and keep reading about and experimenting with PS.
2 things I would do if this were my image.
1- with photoshop, I would take out the orange and white traffice dividers in the upper right hand corner. The white string of lights leads ones eyes directly to those dividers and away from the essence of the image. With PS, you could take those dividers out and no one would ever know they were there to begin with. [Some photography purists would differ with my approach to digitally removing the dividers, but that's another discussion entirely]
2- This is a bit more advanced technique.
A- Take the original image and bring it into Camera Raw and “lighten” up the image overall, bring up the “clarity”, bring up the “vibrance”, and “adjust the “fill” light until you have an image that is almost “perfect”.
B- Save that image as Title_adjusted.
C- Make sure your original and the Camera Raw adjusted are exactly the same dimensions/size.
D- In your original, change the background layer to Layer 0
E- Place the Layer from the Title_adjusted image into the original image.
F- Place Layer 0 on top of the newly inserted Title_adjusted layer.
G- Place a white mask in Layer 0
H- Using a BLACK paint brush, with an opacity of anywhere from 20-50-60-70-100%, paint ON THE WHITE MASK to bring through certain details from the layer below, Title_adjusted.
I- keep doing that until you are satisfied that you have enhanced all the areas you want to enhance.
[[[ Remember, when painting with the balck brush, if you don’t like what you did, you can change to a white brush at 100% opacity and remove the changes you made. Or, you can just delete the entire white mask and start over with a new mask}}}

Give this a try and see if you can make your image more the way you “saw” it in your minds eye.
Lastly, when you go into Camera raw and adjust your original, you can do anything you need to do to the adjusted image. For instance, your adjusted image could be made into a 2 or 3 stop UNDER exposed image, and when you add that layer to your original, you can “paint” all those lights DOWN into near perfect exposures, bring out more detail but retaining the vibrant color.
I hope this opens some doors for you and, if you would like some examples of what this masking technique, stop over at my site and take a look at some of the images.
Let me know how this all works out for you. If you have any further questions feel free to contact me. Lastly, use PS to make your image better. Don’t over use PS. Of course, that’s all very subjective.
Best regards,

Louis

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:28:09 +0000

The picture is too busy. Too many lines in too many directions and none of those directions lead me to any particular place. I find my eyes “slipping” off the picture as I try and follow the different potential points of focus in the image.

One of the tricks to excellent photography is using lines created by the subject to draw your gaze inward to the picture, but never letting your gaze fall/slip out. I’m a particular fan of Ansel Adams so I’ll use this shot as an example: wikipedia-Adams_The_Tetons_and_the_Snake_River

Notice the deceptive simplicity of the shot (its not teeming with too much information) and how no matter what side of the picture you approach from you always end up resting your eyes on the mountain range.

By: dana_h79

dana_h79 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:14:51 +0000

Hi Louis,
Welcome to my blog and thanks for the comment.
I know a little Photoshop and I hope to get into it more so any suggestions would be most welcome.