stockie's imago

I had these shots of Sofea during Ted Adnan’s Outdoor Portraiture Lighting Workshop.

There are strand of leaves flowing at the side of her cheeks and I gotta clone that. I didn’t do a very good job at it, thus I gotta blurred her facial skin tremendously to cover-up my poor cloning job.

After completed, I find it quite satisfying except that I’m not a big fan of super smooth skin-job.

Whaddya think? Not a bad job right!

Given that I am noobie in portraiture, I posted this to FB and tag a sifu and he critisized something that I totally overlooked. (Thanks Zam)

You can guess? (besides the super-smooth facial skin)

Yes? No?

The comment is I touched-up the cheek so nice but forgotten about cheek-bone! The side that I touched-up seems flat!

O boy! If I didn’t ask for the comment, I might not notice that at all!

It’s takes experience to notice such small detail as that coz from my landscape point-of-view, the scene is flawless!

Bwah ha ha ha ha .. I guess, from now on, when I take portraiture, I gotta constantly bugging them for pointers!

Let’s take another example,

This is an IR shot. Off coz some adjustment been done but not so much. As usual, channel mixer to swap color channel. Then I fiddle with Hue & Saturation. I changed the hue to make the tone almost earthy natural.

Again, I’m quite satisfied with the result. Tone, contrast, highlight, shadow and the rest seemed ok to my eyes.

Another sifu commented. Wanna try to guess?

Notice the vein at the back of her hand? He suggested me to tone it down. (Thanks Eddie)

It may sound nitpick especially when the shot is from IR cam however in portraiture, those small small things are very very important! And I thanked him for the comment. So that I’ll be more cautious on my next portraiture shooting.

I’m not changing genre of preference but there is no harm to learn isn’t it? Afterall concept about light & shadow is still the same.

In the previous posting, you will notice that once you straighten the horizon, ACR will automatically removes or crops out incomplete edges.

Crop Tool

Press Z or H to view aligned image.

To further crop your image accordingly, click at the Crop Tool or Press Z.

If you press long enuff at the Crop Tool button, a list of menu appears as options to choose from.

• Normal – you are free select part of your image without constraint.
• 1 to 1, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 to 5, 5 to 7, 9 to 16 – with these options your selection is constrained according to ratio selected.
• Custom – with this option you can choose to crop using ratio, inches, pixel or cm.
  i.e. I chose to crop exactly at 8RW size of  12 inch x 8 inch
• Constraint to image – err err.. God knows!
• Show Overlay – this is a cool thing where it displays a grid of 3 x 3. Super cool when you still struggling about Rule of Third, like me!
• Clear crop – self explanatory ain’t it?

To me on of the most common touch up required is straightening the horizon. Some people don’t mind photos slanting here and there. Some even use it as part of creative expression. However all those depends on individual on the message that they wanted to bring forth. I rather not start on why horizon must straight in landscape. It may works with creative angle on portrait, still life, conceptual, street, urban etc but in landscape? Hmmm…. I better shut up!

Anyway, to straighten the horizon in ACR is such a breeze. Sometime I even purposely open files in ACR just because wanna straighten the horizon here is much easier than in Photoshop which requires few steps. I admit that I’m such a lazy fart!

Straighten Tools

Well, I think from the image, it has been so clear on what need to be done.

1. Click at the Straighten Tool or Press A.
2. Drag along a line that represent horizontally or vertically aligned.

Done!

Take note the ACR automatically crop those unwanted edges.