Tajik woman

[Damon Lynch]

This is my friend Parvina. I found this photo difficult to post process, probably because it was getting a bit dark when I took it. The contrast was very low and I had to make some pretty dramatic changes to the tint.

How does the white balance look? And the contrast?

[nemo295]

The white balance looks pretty good on my calibrated monitor--perhaps a teeny bit biased toward red/magenta in the skin tones.

However the contrast seems a little hard, particularly on the upper part of her right cheek and the bridge of her nose.

[RSL]

The flesh tones appear dead-on, Damon, and that's the important part of color balance for a portrait, but I agree with Doug about the contrast.

[Damon Lynch]

You're right -- thanks so much!! I've updated the copy I linked so the comments above apply to a former version that is now vaporized

Damon

[Steve Weldon]

The contrast is a bit hard as they say, but that's taste.  What bothers me is the whites of her eyes and teeth are more yellow/green than is normally natural and the skin tones the same.  What's happening here is the green grass is acting like a green wall would.. it's reflecting green over your subject.  There is only two ways to prevent this when shooting on green grass.  The easy way is to add a bit of fill flash, just more powerful than the reflected light.  The other way is a custom white balance.

Maybe this short tutorial would be useful.

[Damon Lynch]

Thanks Steve. For this image I actually moved the tint slider massively towards green (more than I've ever done for any image), otherwise it looks simply awful. Regarding your sample image of the Thai girl, on my monitor at least it has a tad too much red/magenta for my taste.

[Vladimirovich]

images are so.... acid colored, almost toxic in their unnaturalness

[Rob C]

If you want to learn to use shallow depth, look at and study Hans Feurer's oeuvre. From that you'll see where it works and why. You can't just open wide or/and shoot people with a long lens and imagine it's naturally going to work.

http://www.wibagency.com

Rob C

[Steve Weldon]

Thanks Steve. For this image I actually moved the tint slider massively towards green (more than I've ever done for any image), otherwise it looks simply awful. Regarding your sample image of the Thai girl, on my monitor at least it has a tad too much red/magenta for my taste.

1.  That tells you the white balance was way off and (assuming you shot in raw) depending on the camera, and I know this is contrary to popular wisdom, but it's possible to blow a color channel past the point of correction if the WB is really far off.  That would explain the saturation issue.  An Auto WB sensor reading a strong green cast could have thrown the file the other way.

2.  You're right, it is.  It's an old image back from another monitor/time/profile and many of the images on my site are a bit off.. I go back and correct them as I get time but it's a big job.

To my eyes this is the WB I'd choose for her, but having not seen her in person I'm guessing.

[nemo295]

Now her skin is so red she looks like a lobster.

[RSL]

Boiled

[Damon Lynch]

images are so.... acid colored, almost toxic in their unnaturalness

From this I assume you and I don't share the same post processing style? 

[Damon Lynch]

If you want to learn to use shallow depth, look at and study Hans Feurer's oeuvre.

Some very impressive work there. I like his more natural post processing style compared to some of the other photographers on the site. Some his images look a little underexposed to me, making me wonder how they look in print. Although that could be deliberate, of course. Thanks for the link!

[Vladimirovich]

From this I assume you and I don't share the same post processing style?  

nope,



PS: Mari (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_people) girl

[Patricia Sheley]

PS: Mari (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_people) girl

...fascinating.

[Rob C]

Some very impressive work there. I like his more natural post processing style compared to some of the other photographers on the site. Some his images look a little underexposed to me, making me wonder how they look in print. Although that could be deliberate, of course. Thanks for the link!

Glad to be of service!

I don't know if you know about fashion shooters of a certain era, but he was very prolific then and did amazing work around the world. I no longer buy fashion magazines and so I'm out of it, but the portfolio still seems relevant... he used to alternate shoots of the Pentax Calendar with Sam Haskins, another hero of mine.

One of the clear virtues of his long lens style is that it both isolates and focusses attention on the product, the 'frocks', and yet still suggests location atmosphere.

Magic Man!

Rob C

[Steve Weldon]

Now her skin is so red she looks like a lobster.

This is starting to get interesting.  And useful.

I assume you're talking about the version of the image I posted?  If so would you share your monitor and what profile you're using?  I'm using a NEC 2690 in sRGB mode.  The image I linked of the Thai girl is too red as I said, I need to go back and redo thousands of files after finally getting my monitor/color right.  But the version of the original image I did looks spot on to me.  I've had people using full gamut modes see more reds, but that's a well known issue with such modes when viewing images prepped for the web (sRGB).

Thanks, if my monitor is off I certainly want to know about it.  I went back and profiled again just now and the changes were insignificant..

[nemo295]

This is starting to get interesting.  And useful.

I assume you're talking about the version of the image I posted?  If so would you share your monitor and what profile you're using?  

Sharing my profile wouldn't be helpful. I calibrate my monitor with a colorimeter, so the profile I use is custom generated for my screen. I also re-calbrate regularly to make sure it stays accurate. Off-the-shelf profiles just don't cut it. My monitor is a 24" NEC PA241W-BK. And I always use Adobe RGB. sRGB may have been useful in the early days of the web when there were large numbers of people using PC monitors that couldn't handle a larger RGB gamut. But these days that's not a major concern. I go for accurate color, so I use the largest color space available to me. Currently that means Abobe RGB. Maybe tomorrow it'll be something else. If someone is looking at my work on a monitor that can only reproduce a smaller subset of the gamut I'm using it's their problem.

[RSL]

If you're going to do critical work, Steve, you've got to do what Doug does and calibrate your monitor regularly with something like the Spyder 3 or Spyder 4, which is what I use. LCD monitors don't drift out of calibration nearly as fast as CRT monitors used to, but they do drift a bit.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

It is generally hard to work on a jpeg after white balance and other adjustments already applied, but here is my try, geared more toward pleasing than accurate (as for accuracy, if I am not mistaken, and from my recollection, their complexion would lean slightly toward olive?):