BUDDY36 Loc: Tennessee

thank you Tracy you are one with heart.

God Bless you.







Buddy36

au2panner Loc: Grand Jct, CO

With knowing you only get to see her once a year, I think it adds to the pic. Shes my life but just a little blurry with only getting to see her only once a year! Its a keeper to me. I have some of my son like that and he lives with me but i dont delete them either!

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

I received a 116K version of the image. That's several times better than what I copied off the site here (37K), but still challenging. I'm attaching a version which I hope is improved over what I put up before, and will try to put some more time in on it later this week. Buddy, I was hoping for a larger file, something more along 1-2 MB. is there such an animal?

Accidental Granddaughter - Progress?

BUDDY36 Loc: Tennessee

No Richard, I am sorry this one was taken on the settings of 122 pictures ( instead of 32 ) that in itself makes the pictures smaller.I did not even think about them being out of focus, as only three or four were. But I do think that you have done a very good job and I did not believe that would have been possible.
Thanks again.
Perhaps on my next family shoot I will stay with the 32 picture settings and use another picture card or downlaod them onto a computer at the sight of the shoot.

Buddy36

one of the better shots I think.

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

Especially if you're going to shoot JPEGs, I think everyone here would recommend shooting at the highest quality and resolution possible. Otherwise, you'll end up with shots that view OK at a moderate size on screen and are suitable to E-mail to friends and family for a "Kodak moment." But images that size won't even tolerate being blown up on screen, and they won't print sharply at any standard size. They certainly won't tolerate much post-processing, and sometimes, that unique shot of time and place, or expression, doesn't come out of the camera the way you saw it. Had to shoot too fast, from too far away, or the light was too harsh on the person near the window.

Per the EXIF data with the shot, it says you used a Fujifilm Finepix S3000, and shot at 640x800 pixels. That camera can shoot at 1280x960 or 1600x1200. You'd get your best results shooting at 1280x960 Fine quality. I don't know how large a card can go in that camera, but if you don't have a larger card than the one that came with it, you might want to spring for one. I don't know if you have any other camera, but today's P&S cameras have come a long way since the S3000, and you wouldn't have to throw big bucks at one.

And I say this while scrimping to save for an entry-level DSLR, which is about all I can afford. I'm thinking of going with the kit lens (yes, I know, they're all supposed to suck) and an adapter which, with luck, will let me use my old lenses in manual mode. So I'm not making any assumptions about what your budget will tolerate.

BUDDY36 Loc: Tennessee

Thank you again for what you have done to make the original picture better. What you have said is very interesting and I am just a new kid on the block. LOL. I am sure my camera will be able to take a larger card to get to the point of the specs that you wrote herein. My budget is bare to the bone so I will save my pennies and grab a larger card. Now it all makes sense to me. It is not what you shoot but what you use to shoot with.
Similar to one using a revolver and of that I am very savy.


Buddy36

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

1. Copy the original file to a working copy.
2. Open the working copy and convert to LAB color.
3. Duplicate the image in a new layer so that the original is available if I mess up.
4. Go to the Lightness channel (L) of the new layer and sharpen.
5. Select the hair and face (a bit of a rough selection, but it wouldn't show in this case) and duplicate them to a new layer (Command-J on the Mac).
6. Additional sharpening of just the hair and face in the Lightness channel of the face and hair layer.
7. Duplicate the two sharpened layers (to preserve my work) and merge the two new layers into one.
8. Loaded the contrasty Levels channel as a selection, inverted the selection and did some more sharpening.
9. Went into the Channels tab and duplicated the Lightness channel of the merged sharpened layers.
10. Changed the Levels to produce a contrasty black and white image.
11. Deselected the selection and added a Curves adjustment layer. Adjusted the curves to brighten the image. Tried increasing the saturation in the a and b levels, but results were unsatisfactory.
12. Added a Levels adjustment layer and adjusted the black and white end points and the mid-gamut point to brighten the image.
13. Selected areas of the face by tone and applied a light Gaussian blur to smooth texture, which had broken up due to earlier sharpening.
14. Cloned a portion of the lip from (my) right side to the left because the left side had gotten burned out and looked lopsided.
15. Saved as a .PSD (Photoshop) file with all my layers in place
16. Flattened image
17. Converted back to RGB
18. Saved as a new JPEG.

Done.

If anyone noticed that this changed after you read it, I made some corrections and clarifications, and reposted. Several times. The beauty of computers: Make a mistake? Fix it! Penalty? Well, could have saved some time if you got it right the first time! :)

Accideental Granddaughter