Damien Symonds

May I see it with the skin a bit less glowy?

That's great, thank you. I've had a look at the channels, and I'm quite sure I can help you with this - it should be a fairly easy fix. So go ahead and do your raw processing first, as normal, then post the photo and the 100% crop again for me, and we'll discuss the solution.

??? The instructions were in the link I gave you.

Since screenshots aren't colour-managed, I need you to post the actual photo, thanks. And a 100% crop of the area as well.

Ok, you have two choices. Spend hours and hours painstakingly masking around your photos, until you go completely insane and end up in home for the deranged, and the result still won't be very good; or Re-shoot the photos on a white floor and wall.

You're living in a dreamland, Jennifer. Your photos can't EVER look the way they looked on your stupidly bright screen. You have to work within the bounds of reality, no matter how little you like it. The good news is, it will only take you a day or two to be used to your proper-brightness screen, and everything will look fine again.

The brightness of your screen has to match your prints, period. Your screen is much too bright.

Oh, great! Do you have a copy of that older photo to show us?

Download the file here.

It took more steps than I wanted. The cooling filter was necessary because you are competent with white balance, whereas I suspect One Split Pea is not. Download the PSD file

Download the file here.

I was hoping to be able to do it in fewer steps, actually, but this was the best I could manage. Download the PSD file

That looks quite normal to me. The big question is, if you do the whole process manually (resize your photo to web size, then Place the watermark file and resize down to that size, then save the file) does it look any different? To me it simply looks like a matter of "too few pixels available to render such tiny text clearly".

The fourth FAQ in this post: http://ask.damiensymonds.net/topic/110-read-this-first-posting-guidelines-and-faqs/

Well spotted! Pat yourself on the back. Yes, definitely convert the template to sRGB before you start putting photos in it. But here's the key - when you go to Edit>Convert to Profile, make sure you UNcheck the flatten box.

Nice work!

It's difficult to judge the amount of matte to apply when we don't have the big dark expanse of the truck. However, is this anywhere close?

The "noise" is simply jpeg compression damage, as far as I can tell. You know what Facebook is like, and it's especially severe if you upload a too-big PNG file (FB seems to like punishing those).

If you insist on using Lightroom, DO NOT save as jpeg. Just use plain "Edit in Photoshop" to transfer your photos. There is no role for jpeg here. And when you do use TIFF, please let me know if you see the same posterization problems.

Then I can't help you. Your shitty quality results are your own fault.

For pete's sake, there should be NO jpg files in your workflow.

Oh shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For the love of God, fix this mess. http://www.damiensymonds.net/bridge-30-day-challenge

Save in what format?

I haven't seen that video before - THANK YOU! So good.

Let me know how you go. Remember, it will take a lot of time to do the masking properly. Don't rush it.