I can't decide if this is too warm, or just right? And also if I should up the sharpening on it? I've been prone to way over-sharpening in the past so I'm trying to err towards soft now but did I over (under) do it? Any other pointers?
D7k with 180mm ED AIS. I'm not sure I can get better manual focus on a 11 month old walker (usually I use the Siggy 85mm but it was inside the house).
Too warm (perhaps and/or too yellow) on my display. If you can selectively sharpen her hair and dress, then sharpen. If you can sharpen her eyes selectively, perhaps. I suggest if you only sharpen the entire image, only sharpen a little if you intend to print it large.
I shot raw. Pushed the yellows and greens b/c everything is dead here. I'll probably go in try to cool down the temp to compensate for the aggressive yellow/green tuning.
Did some more work on it... Sharpened hair, sharpened dress, made it cooler (used her hair as a gauge this time to determine the right temp). Better? Thoughts?
No, not too soft or too warm, the subject IS soft and warm!
BUT the subject is exactly what you seem to have forgotten here.
On the first image it seems to me that you have your philosophy the wrong way round.
You've put your attention on the background by boosting the yellows and greens, this leaves the child looking flat and lost.
The background should be exactly that, background.
It's put to the back, it's there to give pop and depth to a 2 dimensional image,
To achieve this we try and put it out of focus, check! we might desaturate it a touch, Ooops! and if we were getting really technical we might shift it slightly to the blue side as it gets further away.(If it's good enough for landscape painters, it's good enough to me!)
All this done, we now need to bring forward the subject: A demo is easiest I guess.
I hope you can follow the PS layers and masks, I've labelled them to say what they do.
I have of course overexagerated to make a point, it's up to you to season to taste, YMMV...
Any questions or comments please ask.
Hope this helps,
Thanks for the PS screenshot and comments, Silver.
When you applied the gradient mask to the bottom of the image that faded as you went to the top, followed up by the desaturation, was her face not desaturated as well since its in the top 1/3 of the image? Or did the hue increase help bring that back?
The girl we see is on a layer above that: "girl adjustment", with the increased saturation and contrast only applied to her.
If we turned off that layer, yes, we would see a desaturated girl.
