Couple

[Mshake]

Looking for opinions on this one. Mostly on my color correction for their skin tones but anything else that you might see too.

Thanks

Mike

[jesterjeni]

looks nice!!

[Shadow]

Looks really good. How did you get your color correction? This was a tough one and I'm always looking to learn.

[Mshake]

Thanks Shadow!

I always start with a threshold adjustment layer to find black and white points. You probably know but you just slide the slider to the far left and bring it back until you see good pixels change to black, mark that point. Then go back to the threshold layer and slide it to the right then slowly back until you see good pixels turn white, mark that point. Then make a 50% grey layer under the threshold layer and set it to difference blend mode. Back to the threshold layer, slide the slider to the left until you see good pixels turn white, mark it. That is supposed to be your 50% grey point but it sometimes isn't right.

Next step is to turn off or delete the threshold and 50% grey layers. Create a new curves layer. You see three eyedroppers on the left side of the panel. One has white in it one black and one grey. Just click each one and then find the marker you put on the photo that corresponds to it. This sometimes is all you need to do.  :-\

In this extreme case, while close, it wasn't enough so I added a levels adjustment layer. On that you will see the RGB box. Click it and get a drop-down menu for each of the colors, red, green and blue. On each one slide the sliders to meet the histogram, maybe a little more. At this point, it was even closer but still off to my eye.  ???

I added a color balance layer next. Then I just moved the sliders until it looked good to my eye. It had a lot of red in it so I moved that slider quite a bit towards cyan.  :)

I also did some selective adjustments to the shirts and suits. Those were just hue saturation adjustment layers with masking to target those areas. Her suit had some weird splotchy colors so I checked the colorize box on the hue saturation layer and that puts an even color over it all. You can slide the hue slider to get the right color and the saturation slider to reduce the color and the lightness slider too. It's a very powerful and useful adjustment. I did the same with his suit but just desaturated it since it was black.

I thought I was done with the color at that point and sent in it but Bambi noticed the skin tones had a little too much red still so I targeted their skin with another adjustment layer to reduce it a little more. She also didn't like my first attempt at her pink tie. I had painted it and it looked to fake. I ended up finding a bow tie that I sliced up, warped and distorted into roughly the shape of the original. Had to add hue saturation to that to get the color right then a dodge and burn layer for shading.

So all in all I counted and had a crazy 70 layers for this photo. I like to have lots of layers... ;)  There are 9 layers for her hair alone. I use various "hair" brushes with slightly different colors on each layer and some I use different layers for each stroke.

I actually really enjoy doing these and love the challenge. I'm always learning as I go.  :up:

[Shadow]

Wow Mike. Thanks!  :)