I need your opinions!

[grandpawrichard]

Hey guys and gals,
I am really trying to learn how to use my Adobe Photoshop to enhance my photos. Today I got playing with a photo I took of two of my grand daughters the other night. It was at an award ceremony at my grand daughters school. The photo was taken inside a dark auditorium during the ceremony.

Could you please give me some pointers or critique on what I may have accomplished during my editing session? I sure would appreciate your help!

Here are the photos:
Not edited:



and now the edited photo:



Do you think I need to do a little more retouching to get rid of any more background? Do I need to anything else to the photo?

Thanks in advance for any and all your help!

Dick

[jeepasaurusrex]

Any more and you would be hiding some of the detail and would not see the difference between the background and the subjects. Some back lighting is good. 

[grandpawrichard]

Thanks Jeep!
I'm going to try to do a little Color Saturation and a touch of Contrast boost to see what happens. That auditorium was pretty dark for trying to take a portrait like this.

Dick

[jeepasaurusrex]

BEHS?

[grandpawrichard]

BEHS?

Nope! LaVenture Middle School!

Dick

[popeshawnpaul]

If it's a jpg, I would add some mid tone.  Play with the middle slider on the levels...  

If you have it in raw I would really do something more drastic...  Indoor pictures using a pop up flash always look like this, unfortunately.  The black background looks ok but look at a few websites from pro wedding photographers.  The flash photo with underexposed background gets mundane.  So if you shot this raw, you could get all that good blurred background back and tone down the subject.  The photo would be in better balance then.  I hope some of that makes sense...  

Proper lighting indoors can be really difficult.  You really have 2 options.  You can buy a big flash and bounce it to light not only the subject but the background, or you can shoot without flash using a very fast lens and high iso.  I have a 55mm f1.2 and can shoot in very very low light.  I choose not to mess with flash.  

[jeepasaurusrex]

That was my second guess.

Used to live north of town up past the race track/ Kesselrings.


I've always had issues taking pictures inside. Then again, maybe I should upgrade from a point an shoot camera. 

[boneaddict]

maybe eliminate the little bit of lighted background behind pony, but you did good.

[grandpawrichard]

My latest attempt to edit the photo turned out fair, but I still have a long way to go!



My next step is to get the colors balanced out better. I think I put a little too much red in this one while I was trying to enhance the red tints in her hair to make them stand out from the background.

Dick

[popeshawnpaul]

I like the original the best...lol.  The colors on the original are good.  Too much red in the latest one...

[grandpawrichard]

Thank you Shawn! I sure don't like the colors on the latest one either, so I will be back to the drawing boards on that one! 

Dick

[popeshawnpaul]

Here is my 2 minute attempt... 

[509er]

that an amazing difference!

[grandpawrichard]

You got that right 509er! Shawn is the man when it comes to cameras, lenses and Photoshop!  Thanks Shawn!

Dick

[Todd_ID]

And here I thought Shawn just took really good pictures!  As it turns out he edits them all to heck to trick us......    Just kidding!

Grampa, I have a tough time saying that the original picture is not a great one.  It certainly would look good in a frame on the mantle.  Maybe try printing one of each of the ones you have now, along with Shawn's, and see which you like the best in the frame.  I'm guessing that they'll all look pretty good.