Photography and portraits

[Sir Wolf]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/526270_3253055758570_1032321511_33061081_766468004_n.jpg



me in the middle. awesome effect the guy had

[Sir Edward]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/526270_3253055758570_1032321511_33061081_766468004_n.jpg



me in the middle. awesome effect the guy had

Yeah, I saw that on facebook, along with the unedited copy. He did some interesting stuff with the contrast to really make the faces pop, and to enhance the texture of everything else.

[Sir Brian]

The only thing I would have to say that is wrong with the picture is those grunts are entirely too clean! - They need to go without a shower for a week or two in their BDUs then take the picture!

[Sir Wolf]

everyone always says the clean bit. that was taken after a day in the woods. you can see carsons torn pants my torn elbow and zacks torn shoulder(thank you modern razor wire still left up by the modern military) . wool uniforms are so easy to keep clean it isnt even funny. once they get soiled you literally wait till they dry and brush off the dirt. my pants are originals and still look that good hehehe.

[Sir Brian]

everyone always says the clean bit. that was taken after a day in the woods.

Exactly! A day is not a week or two.
Basically if the BDUs can't stand up on their own due to the accumulated dirt, grime and body salts then they are too clean. 
I remember sections of my BDUs actually turning white from being saturated with so much of my body salt after a couple weeks in the field. It was even more prevalent with those old OD fatigues.

[Sir Wolf]

ah but bdus are cotton not wool too i dont wash my uniform unless its a display event or dday where i need to look clean. the 41 jackets are cotton exterier, what you can't see is my right arm is black from my belly craw under a machine gun nest hehehe. it's still fun though. we get dirty then clean up. we do 12+ events a year and after 3 years the only thing that shows it's wear is the boots.

[Sir Edward]

Some more. Basically I'm hoping they're good enough to photoshop into something nice by someone who knows how to photoshop    *Hint Hint* 

These aren't too bad, overall. The only thing is that these are mostly 720 pixels high. I'd much rather work with images that are 2000 or larger.

As we discussed, the black background isn't bad, it just becomes a problem if there's something on you that's black that it's right in front of the black background, because it gets lost.

The lighting is fantastic on these. No sharp shadows.  This is surprising since it looks like a camera flash was used. Normally this is bad. But basically, this is the kind of lighting to aim for if you want to do photoshop projects, specifically diffuse lighting. Outdoor shots work great for this too if it's shaded or overcast, and no "noisy" background.

Rule of thumb-- The final product is only as good as the pictures you work from, so if the original is blurry, over-exposed, or badly jpeg compressed, there's only so much you can do to fix it. That is, I don't have the skill or patience to fix a bad photo, and I doubt anyone else here would either.

I already posted this one in another thread, but I'll share it again here. This was maybe a 5-10 minute hack. I made use of the pure-black background to blast out the contrast to get the mask I needed to lift Nathan out of the picture. Then it just took some color adjusting and minor touch-ups around the edges, and paste in a background and apply a blur to that background. Done.

[Sir Edward]

I just thought I'd post a quick example of really basic retouching, using a picture taken by Sir Brian's lovely wife. Images often come off the camera with poor contrast. I think in an effort to make the images not come out too dark, often the deep black and dark colors get washed out.

A simple two-step process I often use is to hit it with "Levels" in photoshop, to adjust the black and white levels on the histogram to get the dark blacks and bright whites back, and then use "Curves" to give it an S-curve for the contrast, deepening the darks and brightening the lights.

Sometimes I'll go on and do more to the picture, but these two steps can do wonders for most pictures.

[Sir James A]

Wow, nicely done. I need to try this soon on a few of my own.

[Sir Brian]

Well done Sir Edward! Your retouched photo is much better than the original!

[Sir Edward]

Well done Sir Edward! Your retouched photo is much better than the original!

I hope you don't mind me picking on one of your photos. It was just a really good example since it came out so grey.

Technically both steps can be done in Curves, but Levels makes it more obvious what you're doing on the ends of the histogram.

[Ian]

Just realize curves is generally only available in real photoshop (i.e. the creative suite versions, not elements) most consumer level photo editing software just has levels, but you can accomplish the same things in a more roundabout way. I tend to use Photoshop Lightroom for all my retouching, and reserve Photoshop for heavy manipulation.

[Lord Dane]

Nice picture, Sir Brian & nice touch-up, Sir Edward.