fotographer.nz

ok gracias perhaps that'd be good info to add to your page about making the sheet (for us novices )?

So ... is one strip the preferred one to 'drag' on ?

Yes I drag, correcto

Just a quick question re your white balance sheet. I took a photo in the studio of both your sheet (and my colour checker passport just out of interest to see the results and differences) but my question is ... when setting your white balance which strip do you click on? I generally look for an area closest to 230 x 3 but none of the strips give me that, actually the white around the edge of the sheet does though and that gives me a temperature of 6050 which coincidentally is what we worked out before I had the sheet.

ok sweet ta - yeah it's amazing sometimes the difference between just 3 and 4%

Thanks I'll take a look. Funny you should say that, I was just back in raw fixing that, I had done it to some extent, I'd just done a rubbish job. :[ Nice job, so if the material was smoother you'd just heal or patch it?

Sure

SOOR, any hot tips for helping Mum's tummy area?

Yep awesome thanks, you're a veritable little font of ps knowledge arent you

I have an editing question about liquifying. I know you recommend doing it early in the piece before any other PS editing but lets say a client loves an already edited photo but doesn't love themselves in it and asks for some PS magic aka liquify. Time is never on my side and sometimes the client also wants to see the with and without versions so as long as I make sure that the surrounding background isn't affected etc can a second liquified version be made from the original finished image or is it so vital that you'd recommend totally starting from scratch each time?

no worries

I like your colour better but I just couldn't get there, been looking at it too long now. Anyways it's an improvement to the original messy background, I added some noise on my fill layer but then saw the problem of the initial patch up. I added some noise to the patch too but I would have the same problem between those layers if I wanted to add a wallpaper-like pattern so I called it a day. Anyway to avoid that? To have the whole background editable as one layer? Could I merge the patch and the fill?

oh yeah I spotted it in the end sorry, the bit on the wall. I'm following your psd for about the 10th time which is a great help thanks but I cant get it as good as yours, just that bit between their heads is driving me spastic!

Ok I think I get it, don't worry about making out those flyaways right? the darker colour on them wont matter? I like that!

Did you click between the flyaways on your levels layer to get a better masking job with the paint behind them?

Ok your process was a bit different. Did you actually clone anything in that first clone layer? It only seems to disappear with your colour fill. When I was experimenting with the colour fill I was using a gradient, do you think that might make the wall a little more realistic or not worth it?

That's a handy little trick isn't it, nice, thanks I have only done that first step after following that article, I didn't see your PSD there so I'll have a look now and then finish it off. I ended up masking the white wall area and then inverted it. To me it looks like there's still a little grey around those flyaways although I refined the mask - what do you think?

Yep mean, thank you. I was experimenting with tones from the sofa too but that was defintely too samey samey. Those flyaways were giving me some grief too. Would love to see the PSD if you fancy sharing

I'm leaning towards some tone of the beige to provide a little more contrast,

Awesome thanks, hmm I was just thinking that the best option would be to make it look like a solid wall behind them, I guess I could get creative and add a texture to look like wallpaper but just a solid realistic wall behind them would be a good start.

So to get started on my levels work would you have any suggestions for the background? For some reason the baby screamed as soon as she was taken into the studio but I didn't want them to miss out on a grandparent shot so I took a shot in the lounge but as you can see the background leaves a lot to be desired. Would you pick an in between hue of the two wall colours and do a fill layer with a bit of texture or could you suggest any other options?

Let me start again. Firstly I thought I may have done a bad job with the mask on my levels layer on the background. I only wanted to work on the right hand side, hence the mask. But when I looked again I thought it more likely that the problem arose from my dodging and burning which as you mentioned has no mask. Sorry if I confused the issue.

oh yes, for the d&b I was only using 2 or 3%. I thought you were asking about the mask.

I would have thought 100. Looking at it again, maybe it's my dodging. perhaps I'm going a bit heavy handed on that and/or accidentally hitting the lighter areas along with the darker ones.