Crystal and Brandon

[k9ofkaos]

This is the one they chose for the paper. I did clone out the extra catchlights per Athena's suggestion in the other thread.



My issue with it is that the wrinkles in the muslin are showing. I should have backed up some and show with a longer focal length, but I didn't. If anyone has a minute or two to spare, and could outline the steps I need to use to blur the background in Photoshop, I'd appreciate it. I am no photoshop wizard.

[sonshine_rae]

hmm I don't use photoshop, but I would mask the couple out, then selectively gaussian blur the background, a bit heavily. And see if that will be enough. Some people clone out the wrinkles.. but that seems to tedious to me.

[gaopa2]

Maurice.....forget the wrinkles! That is a fine photograph and I can see why they wanted it for the paper. Well done!

[patterfr]

THis is some very fine work IMHO and I can see how they would like it. Since they are so different from the background color, use the Quick selection tool run it around them, invert selection>gaussian blur, high, all this on a dup layer. then adjust opacity on the duplicated layer. Add a sweet little vignette from Jason on his actions and voila. The edge sometimes looks alittle rough, you can use the refine edge function or a mask and work on the edges yourself.

[TimAndrea]

looks nice, did you ps the skin at all? i like the conversioned one as well.

[Dacoda Image]

Maurice, I really like this image... share your lighting set up! I see you shot this at f/9.0... maybe you could have done f/5.6 or move them a tad bit further from the BG to achieve a bit more bokeh... oh well as you can see from the other post above and mine as well, good ol photoshop can help us with our 'after thoughts'. I use the lens blur though rather than glassian blur.

I do like your BG... where did you get that?

[Athena]

That's really nice Maurice. At what size will it print in the paper? Color or B&W? You way want to drop it to B&W for them if that's how it will print.

[patterfr]

And in hindsight he's got a few red dots on his nose, above his upper left lip and a few on his left neck I'm sure that could be "healed" as well. I'll leave the lighting etc up to you lighting gurus, but I think they'll love this and 50 yrs from now they'll look back at this picture as their "engagement pic" Nice thought, huh?

[harryd]

Mojo you did good with the lighting on this one too! I like the edits with the background out of focus more as well.

[k9ofkaos]

Originally Posted by sonshine_rae

hmm I don't use photoshop, but I would mask the couple out, then selectively gaussian blur the background, a bit heavily. And see if that will be enough. Some people clone out the wrinkles.. but that seems to tedious to me.

Thanks Rae. I'm really going to have to get better at post work.

Originally Posted by gaopa2

Maurice.....forget the wrinkles! That is a fine photograph and I can see why they wanted it for the paper. Well done!

Thank you Bill

Originally Posted by patterfr

THis is some very fine work IMHO and I can see how they would like it. Since they are so different from the background color, use the Quick selection tool run it around them, invert selection>gaussian blur, high, all this on a dup layer. then adjust opacity on the duplicated layer. Add a sweet little vignette from Jason on his actions and voila. The edge sometimes looks alittle rough, you can use the refine edge function or a mask and work on the edges yourself.

I like your edit. Thanks for taking time to explain and show how you did it.

Originally Posted by TimAndrea

looks nice, did you ps the skin at all? i like the conversioned one as well.

I use Portrait Professional, but I always set it at about 30% opacity.

Originally Posted by Dacoda Image

Maurice, I really like this image... share your lighting set up! I see you shot this at f/9.0... maybe you could have done f/5.6 or move them a tad bit further from the BG to achieve a bit more bokeh... oh well as you can see from the other post above and mine as well, good ol photoshop can help us with our 'after thoughts'. I use the lens blur though rather than glassian blur.

I do like your BG... where did you get that?

I used an AB800 with large octabox camera left and perpendicular to the lens axis for main metered at f/8, hoping this would feather the light. Fill was an AB800 with 35 inch octabox on axis about head high metered at f/5.6.

I got the background from Silverlake. They are very heavy duty muslins and quite expensive, but they also sell onm ebay and you can get some at a fairly good price there.

Originally Posted by Athena

That's really nice Maurice. At what size will it print in the paper? Color or B&W? You way want to drop it to B&W for them if that's how it will print.

I did a BW convert and sent to them for the paper. I guess it will be the standard small size.

Originally Posted by harryd

Mojo you did good with the lighting on this one too! I like the edits with the background out of focus more as well.

Thanks Harry.