Damien Symonds

Image>Mode>8bit Yet another strike against them. I've never heard such nonsense.

Yeah, that's not easy. And I see no particular benefit in it. Let's just give them one file and let them worry about the strips. First, flatten the layers. Second, convert to 8-bit. I noticed earlier that you're in 16-bit. That's not really necessary for a well-lit photo like this, but it doesn't do any harm either. But it definitely needs to be 8-bit for the output stage. Third, choose your Crop Tool and enter the height and width of the whole print. It has to be in inches, so you'll need to convert your feet to inches. Make sure you leave the Resolution field blank. Please show me a screenshot when you've entered these values, so that I can check them before you crop.

No, I don't agree. We do know exactly how to crop, and we can make some educated assumptions about the resizing and the resolution. However, if you've already submitted it, we might as well wait and see how the sample looks, eh?

It's not that that layer won't work. It's that any adjustment layers under pixel layers won't work any more. You can't re-adjust them, because they're obscured by pixels.

Oh, right. ALL PIXEL LAYERS MUST BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STACK. Period.

Yeah, in the absence of any other information, it's generally the one everyone uses. It's nerve-jangling, though. The best possible scenario is when the company is truly skilled in colour-management, and accept your sRGB file. I wrote a bit about this here: https://www.damiensymonds.net/cmyk-rgb-files-press.html

Do you understand why this is not correct? (It's the only thing you could have done here, but it's not correct.) Because now that you've done that, you can no longer adjust any of the layers below. Please confirm your understanding of this.

Now, what information did you get about the CMYK profile?

There's no way to remove the spots "correctly" with the layers like this. So whatever you've already done, just go with it. Don't do it over. This is a lovely photo, by the way. I'm sorry I haven't remembered to say that before now.

This is yet another pointer towards their incompetence. I'm getting increasingly nervous about these people, that's for sure.

This is excellent. Not measly at all. Oh, you've already sent it? Ok, it should be fine.

Yep, this is great. Great news!!!! Oh crap, yes, of COURSE you must do that before flattening. That cloning/healing layer must be part of your PSD file. May I see a screenshot of your layers panel?

Christy ... this is me. I'm aware of how boastful this sounds, but I'm a REALLY good Photoshop operator. There aren't many people in the world with better skills than I have. I was able to achieve that result, using only Photoshop, with the average-standard raw edit you supplied me with. If you aspire to achieve a similar level of work, you're gonna need to give yourself the best possible start by doing the best possible raw editing.

You only gave me a jpeg file, so of course I couldn't do any of it in ACR.

Yes, but it would be pretty expensive. At least $25 per photo, probably more for more complicated ones.

No, sorry.

Yeah, that's better. How many photos have this problem? The Adobe RGB problem, I mean, not the stage lighting problem.

Nope, still Adobe RGB.

Fair enough. First, fix the much more serious problem: https://www.damiensymonds.net/art_tscs000.html

Sure! What colour would you like the background to be? (Don't say black, by the way. It can't be done. It needs to be another light colour.)

That does look like you've overdone it. I think 63 is unnecessarily high.

Yes, I know, and you'll learn about the others in the Raw Class. But for now, those are the two important ones.

I'm sorry too. It's sports carnival day at my kids' school today, so I went along there for a bit. First place for my son in his race! I've come back to catch up on a few questions. I forgot about the noise! How incompetent of me! I'll need to see a 100% crop to assess the noise. Here are the instructions for raw noise removal. If you didn't do the noise removal properly at the beginning, then yes, you'll have to start over. For a job of this magnitude, it's CRITICAL that all noise is gone. As I said earlier, make sure you do all your editing in the exactly usual way. That means NO FLATTENING. Make sure you save your fully-edited master file as a PSD file with all the layers intact. Read this important information I'm so desperately sorry, I can't tell you how to sharpen, because you're not in my Sharpening Class. I can't talk about class content outside of class. (This probably answers your last question.) This is a VERY good question - possibly the most important question of all. But we'll come back to it a bit later, once all the editing is done and the PSD file is saved. Please remember, though, DON'T CROP DURING EDITING. Leave all those blank edges around your image and everything. This is so important. Read more info Yes, this is vital. I guess I don't need to remind you how BIG and PUBLIC this photo is going to be, so we MUST get the colour right. Yeah, I wish that too, but the important thing is that you're here now. We'll rock this, I promise.

Crap