Damien Symonds

Hey, good progress!

Glad we got that sorted out. Now, back to these glasses ... I used a Levels layer, and moved the white slider on each channel thusly: Red 170 Green 150 Blue 135 Then masked it as needed - first at 100%, then massaged it at 10%.

Yes, DNG is a slightly compressed format. I don't know how they do it, but don't worry, no quality is lost.

Yep, good stuff! For the areas of her face which are too bright, maybe this might work?

Pour a stiff drink, put some music on, and start very gently dodging and burning her face to make it look front-lit.

Amazing what correct white balance does :\

Well, it would still require a fair bit of D&B to make it look akin to the example ones, but yes, it should be feasible. And it's lovely and golden already, yes?

The example photos you linked ... I assume they had some fill flash used. You'd need to ask about it in a photography group though - I can't advise you on that.

I suggest you read the article again, so you understand the important purpose of the 11:15 principle.

They're very different procedures. For the ones you are printing yourself, you crop to the exact size you intend to print, at the exact resolution your lab requires. For client or family digital files, you crop to 11:15, period. You must purge this stupid shit from your head. What you "like" is completely bloody irrelevant.

To a degree, yes. It would take some very patient and time-consuming D&B. Can you re-shoot?

You might have to if you find your cutting out wasn't any good. But if you think it's ok, no, don't double your workload.

No, this is awful. Edit properly, please. Have you read the class yet? Oh gosh, this isn't right. http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/09/extract-then-copy-vs-copy-then-extract.html But it's too late now, don't go back.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Post them separately for me please. But edit them properly first. The main one looks awful.

Since the face angles are the same, this should be a piece of cake. http://www.damiensymonds.net/headswaps.html Try just swapping the eyes at first. But maybe it might be necessary to swap all the facial features. Don't try to swap the whole head, that will be unnecessary.

No, don't keep 'em. Just the DNG files are fine

I don't want you to think that tiffs and CMYK are related. They're separate issues. Tiff files can be CMYK or RGB (or even Grayscale). Just like Jpeg files can be CMYK or RGB or Grayscale. Even if your printer had asked for CMYK Jpeg files, I would still be telling you that I'm worried about the CMYK profile.

You're welcome. Please let me know what he says.

Yes. Or, if it's not one of those names, he must email you the right profile to use.

Yes, that's the right place to change it. But I don't know if that's the right profile to choose. You need to ask the printer exactly which profile to choose.

TIFF is fine, it's not the problem. (It indicates that your printers are old-fashioned and foolish, but it's not technically a problem.) The point of the article is that you can't just change the mode to CMYK. That's incredibly dangerous. I want to help you make sure your photo will print properly. No, that's only for newspapers.

A mouse button gets a heck of a lot of punishment. They're bound to fail eventually. It's a possibility we can't ignore.

Oh gee, this is REALLY bad. http://www.damiensymonds.net/2011/05/please-be-wary-of-cmyk.html

Ok, good. But I'd like to talk about this a bit more, if I may. Can you tell me why you're converting to CMYK? And which CMYK profile you're converting to? Where are these photos being printed?

Can we eliminate that? Do you have a different mouse you can try?