manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

I appreciated all the comments and suggestions made on the last posting and tried to add (and subtract) some of things folks pointed out.

I lightened the whole of the image and specifically brightened the eyes, primarily the right eye. I removed the cord for the pendant that was just out of the picture. And finally, I added a little pink to the upper lip and chin per Graham's suggestion.

Please tell me if I've done too much or too little or need to just reshoot. Thank you again for your frankness.

(Download)

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I think it's excellent!

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

Thank you. Did you see the first rendition?

R.G. Loc: Scotland

I would say it's basically good but there are still a few tweaks that you could give it. The complexion has a yellowish tint to it which is made worse by being blotchy. This may be how you're used to seeing her, but it's not flattering. I found that it responded to some fairly heavy-handed treatment in Lightroom's HSL section, where I gave yellow the following adjustments -

H -35

S -25

L +22

To a lesser extent I did similar things to orange. I also shifted the Tint slider to +3, lightened the shadows a little more and dropped the highlights a bit. This all goes against the slightly dramatic look that your edit gave it, but the result is more flattering - something I predict she won't have a problem with :-) .

The rest were minor quibbles - removing the light patches on the fabric in the top left corner, lightening her irises a touch.

A curious effect - the cardigan didn't respond to the green sliders but the white polo neck did, and the cardigan responded to aqua.

A final quibble is that the catchlights aren't the best (a four-panel window) and they impinge on the edge of the pupil in her left eye.

These might seem like minor quibbles, but you'll no doubt want this record of your mother-in-law to be flattering rather than uncompromisingly true to that moment in time.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Great. But move left eye catchlight to the same position as in the right eye. Del

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Yes. I found that and like it also. The shadow on the right in the first is interesting. Not sure which one I like best.

After looking, my wife and I decided we like the original better. A little more depth in it, and my wife says you can see "her life" in it more.

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

Hmmm, something I don't understand. I took the image I had posted that I had originated in LR and after adjustments, took to Elements to do what I couldn't do in LR, like removing the cord for the pendant, eye work, etc. then saved it back to LR. When I opened it in LR, it doesn't look like it did in PSE. The yellow is there that you are talking about, and other colors and tones are poor. What am I doing wrong? I thought the transfer between LR and PSE was supposed to be more seamless.

Weddingguy Loc: British Columbia - Canada

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: I think you've done great. Any further post processing to me would just be nit pickin'.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

The transfer should be seamless, especially if you're using "Edit in..." in LR. Perhaps somebody that's more familiar with transfers can give you specifics.

It's a while since I used PSE and even longer since I did an external edit from LR. What I do remember is PSE doing funny things to colours sometimes, and I've seen it happen when transferring from LR to PSE (but never the other way round).

My memory of PSE Saturation is that it tended to make the colouring garish, and it didn't take a lot to do that. I noted that one of the reasons for the extra garishness was that red, orange and in particular yellow were boosted generously with increased saturation. Perhaps you used the Saturation slider in Elements and that adjustment didn't translate well to LR.

Or perhaps it's something to do with the drop to 8 bit processing that Elements imposes sometimes. Or did you change from sRGB to some other colour space in Elements ( CMYK? ) then forgot you'd done it. (These are all wild guesses :? ). I wouldn't expect adjustments to cause problems, but a change in colour space would be a very likely source of odd effects.

Or did you transfer by exporting as a jpg? Every time an image is jpegged it is processed.....

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

Thanks. I do like the product of the changes folks recommended. Interesting enough, I showed the images side by side to my mother-in-law (the subject of the pictures) and pointed out what I had changed and she said she could see the difference except for the removal of the pendant cord.

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

Thanks for analyzing the possible problem. Just so you know, my general work process for all my images is taking them straight in to LR as RAW files, processing them as needed and if needed, transfer them "edit in" to PSE where I do what I cannot do in LR.

I generally don't mess much with the saturation, luminance, or hue since if that was needed, I probably dealt with it in LR. Once I am through with PSE, I save which transfers them back to LR unless I specify elsewhere. They transfer back to LR in TIFF format.

Most of my images never see PSE either because I can do all that I need to in LR and because my skills in PSE are very limited.

Not sure what happened with the color changes. I think that if I just open the picture as I finished with it in PSE in "preview", it looks pretty much like I think I left it when I saved it from PSE. When I transferred it and opened it once again in LR, it looked bad.