Snow Portrait and a little photoshop practice: It was a balmy 38 degrees today in NY and so I decided to grab a neighbors kid and practice a little with natural light during the golden...

alissaspieces Loc: New York

It was a balmy 38 degrees today in NY and so I decided to grab a neighbors kid and practice a little with natural light during the golden hour. I have been learning photoshop and I just learned about frequency separation technique and wanted to try it. Hopefully I was able to accomplish touched up skin yet keeping the texture. I have also been playing with adding textures to my photos and a little bit of light. Ok..I probably should really wait until tomorrow to post this when I have a little time to step back an look fresh tomorrow, but I am an impatient girl! lol

Thanks for looking and cc.

(Download)

pixbyjnjphotos Loc: Apache Junction,AZ

Very nice photo of a pretty young lady. I like it. Sort of soft with good focus. Some young ladies, as this one is, have a full face with not a lot of facial features. Therefore, the lighting may not show many. I think your lighting is excellent. Really shows those big beautiful eyes. Keep up the good work, have fun, and have a GREAT DAY!

waltchilds Loc: Central Florida

Alissa, this looks good, I think you did well with the frequency separation. I too have been learn this technique so it seems like we are on similar paths. I also like what you did with the texture in the background just not sure what you did. Overall, well done.

Bobbee

Nice, On download I see you in her eyes.

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

Frequency separation is a very good technique to use. I really scoped out this photo and I would say you did very good! Do you remember what opacity that you used? That, to me was the key.

Erv Loc: Medina Ohio

Very beautiful Alissa!! I didn't like the skin tones till I used the down load. That made a big difference! But those eyes with your reflection in them is very cool. I would like you to crop the eye to see how that would look.:):) I think they call them a selfie? :)

Nightsky Loc: Augusta, GA USA

Excellent image Alissa. Love the engagement with the camera and the softness adds rather than detracts from the whole.

alissaspieces Loc: New York

Thank you for your comments. She is a cute girl and the lighting was so soft at that moment..the sun was just about setting, which made it ideal for natural light. The frequency separation technique definatly made it softer, and maybe a little too soft. But I am really new at any form of post processing by hand..so it seems as if it is trial and error. THanks!

pixbyjnjphotos wrote:

Very nice photo of a pretty young lady. I like it. Sort of soft with good focus. Some young ladies, as this one is, have a full face with not a lot of facial features. Therefore, the lighting may not show many. I think your lighting is excellent. Really shows those big beautiful eyes. Keep up the good work, have fun, and have a GREAT DAY!

alissaspieces Loc: New York

Walt..we are definatly on the same learning path! So funny! I Now that it is morning, I think I might have softened the skin a little too much. The background was a texture layer that I got off the internet . I put the texture over it and I think I put it in soft light mode and then masked it and wiped it off the face and body and played with the opacity. I feel like there is so much to learn with ps and since i am teaching myself, I seem to be tackling some more advanced stuff but still don't have some of the basics down. I think this summer I am actually going to take an intro class to teach me some of the more basic features that I have missed in my own self teaching.

waltchilds wrote:

Alissa, this looks good, I think you did well with the frequency separation. I too have been learn this technique so it seems like we are on similar paths. I also like what you did with the texture in the background just not sure what you did. Overall, well done.

alissaspieces Loc: New York

Ha! Yes..there I am! lol Thanks Bobbee!

Bobbee wrote:

Nice, On download I see you in her eyes.

alissaspieces Loc: New York

Thank you very much, I am glad that you like it!

Nightsky wrote:

Excellent image Alissa. Love the engagement with the camera and the softness adds rather than detracts from the whole.

alissaspieces Loc: New York

Hmm...I think I am going to try that! So cool! Thanks Erv...I do think that I might have gone a bit overboard with the softning. Next time I am going to tone it back a bit. This was my first try. Thanks for the kind words!

Erv wrote:

Very beautiful Alissa!! I didn't like the skin tones till I used the down load. That made a big difference! But those eyes with your reflection in them is very cool. I would like you to crop the eye to see how that would look.:):) I think they call them a selfie? :)

alissaspieces Loc: New York

Thank you Tom! I wish I could remember, but I think I actually should have pulled back the opacity a tiny bit more. I of course already flattened out the photo..big mistake..I know! lol

tainkc wrote:

Frequency separation is a very good technique to use. I really scoped out this photo and I would say you did very good! Do you remember what opacity that you used? That, to me was the key.

jonsommer Loc: Usually, somewhere on the U.S. west coast.

Alissa Beth, in my humble opinion, you really nailed this one - the light, the expression, the pose, the 'feel', the softness and even the crop are either approaching perfection or are already there. One thing to watch out for is that to me, on this iPad her camera left eye looks just a skosh too white, especially just right of the iris and the whites of her eyes look a little flat, as opposed to looking spherical.

I too, am working at learning the wonderful complexities of Photoshop on my own. I saw a recent video featuring a famous photographer who estimated that he had spent 10,000 hours learning Photoshop and he felt he was just starting to feel comfortable with it! So, I've got a long ways to go, but the process is both fun and frustrating, and one of the hard parts is that honest critique is hard to come by so measuring your progress is kinda hard.

So now I'll have to find out what a frequency separation is. Thanks for posting this terrific photo and mentioning your process. Bye the way, I think the softening on her skin is perfect.

Jon

alissaspieces Loc: New York

Wow Jon! Thank you! I am so glad that you like it! Yes..it is so hard to crique one owns work and I can see how photoshop is going to be a life long learning process (which I think is a good thing!- Won't get bored!). I will clean up the eye..I can see what you are talking about!

I watched this video: http://phlearn.com/amazing-power-frequency-separation-retouching-photoshop
so that I could understand the process, but then luckily he also created a free action that I ended up downloading. I am still trying to absorb and understand the creation of it and I am going to try it from scratch next time so that I can learn and understand photoshop better.

jonsommer wrote:

Alissa Beth, in my humble opinion, you really nail... (show quote)