Acufine3200 Loc: Texarkana USA

Having been a basic PS user since the mid-'90s, and still an old film-guy at heart, I'm finally getting a chance to explore various stand alone software that can be incorporated as a plugin to PS. The first image below was shot 10-years ago for an employee's daughter as part of her senior portrait mix I did. She was stiff (known her all her life--not good sometimes), and I was trying for a leaning shot. The background was going to be blurred, and vignetted in post, so I wasn't worried about the extraneous "uglies" created by the sheets. Unfortunately I couldn't get her to relax, so after a few shots I gathered my equipment, and we went on to the outdoor shots around town. I never produced this shot for the family because I couldn't find the right perspective/presentation.

Soooo, last night I'm searching through a harddrive for a particular shot, and I come across this one. After finding the other shot I came back to this one, and couldn't resist loading it back into PS, adjusting the temp and shadows a bit, and then sent it to the latest version of Portrait Pro. WOW! In 25-minutes a dead-shot was transformed into a useable portrait. Just to make sure I wasn't tad overly impressed with myself, I emailed it to her mom who replied with a request this morning for four 8x10's--TEN YEARS after the initial shot.

Portrait Pro has become a oft-used tool over the past three months. The learning curve isn't too rough; it has a number of pre-sets, and automatic suggestions, so I was up and using it without help after about 20-minutes. After learning the nuts-and-bolts I'm really having fun with it.

In fact after last night, I'm wondering how much "gold" I have on my other archived hard drives.

Original--Olympus E-1, Oly Zuiko 14-54


After Portrait Pro

Red Sky At Night

👍

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

I use Portrait Pro a lot, and love it. The knock on it is that the adjustments can make the subject look plasticy. This is true if you over do it. I think you did a great job! I am confused, however, as the angle of the head looks different.
Steve

Acufine3200 Loc: Texarkana USA

I “leaned” the image to the left, and shadowed her face at camera right. We were constantly told in college to paint with the lights. During a shoot I have a hard time seeing it, so I generally depend on getting things right in post. Probably why I was better at news & sports photography, lol.

bigwolf40 Loc: Effort, Pa.

Rich

Acufine3200 Loc: Texarkana USA

Thanks, Rich!

sujoncps Loc: Dhaka, Bangladesh

Everybody wants the quick fix for everything and it is perfect, but we should keep in mind that there is no mistake left. As I see, here in this image a bit hair portion is looking hard due to the blur effect. It dosen't mean that your job is not good, but It is OK

(Download)

Acufine3200 Loc: Texarkana USA

You’re correct—a bit distracting. I actually did the edge-blur myself in Photoshop due to the harshness of the original against the background. Good catch, and thanks!