Need help to "adjust" this image

[Wilton Tifft]

Sorry to bother you folks with this but this image is driving me nuts. In photoshop the colors are, I am sure different than here, but I need to give this image just a "little" (here you can choose your term) spark, slight seperation, a bit of "punch". Whatever it needs I have been unable to accomplish using what I consider the normal tools as the "change" will have to be subtle. I guess the best way to describe it is that I want to "lift" the face ever so slightly from the surrounding background. I have done a large print and the results are very good but just needs that little bit extra that I am hoping someone here can point (lead) me to.

Thanks for your patience as it is late and I am rambling.

Wil Tifft

[lokki]

Hi Will,

You may have better luck posting this in the Photography forum. Lots of people there are expert PS Tweakers.

Sorry I don't have a better suggestion just now... have you tried playing with masks and reducing the saturation of the background?

[Hannu Hurme]

That's tough. I think you have to separate that woman on a new layer and do something with the background (or wise versa). Her skin is so read there's almost no contrast between it and the background... tough nut, hehe. :)

[theGuest]

Have you tried this Wil?...
Open the photo.

Create a very tight selection of the woman's face and hair -- or just the part(s) you want to bring out. Then with the main photo layer active, press Ctrl/Cmd+J to create a copy of the selected area to a new layer.

Change the document colour MODE to CMYK (if you're not already in it) - but DO NOT FLATTEN when asked.

Go into the Channels palette and click on the Black channel. When you do that, you'll have to click on the CMYK channel to make the photo show as normal again.

Now open the Unsharp Mask filter and try these seetings: Amount=150% / Radius=0.5 / Threshold=0. Tweak these to your own taste. Then apply the filter. The filter will only be applied to the copy of the face layer you made; not to the original photo. So no worries there.

Now switch the colour Mode back to RGB; if you switched it earlier. Again, choose NOT to flatten the document when asked. See if that helps any. :&

TIP 1: if need be, you can also soften the edges of the effect by adding a layer mask to the face layer you created, and blurring it slightly.

TIP 2: to get a more subtle effect, just set the sharpened face layer to either Lighten or Darken blend mode.

[Greg Vander Houwen]

Wil,

I think your goal here would need a couple of things.

First, the color of her face and the background are too similar. I would color shift the background or desaturate it a bit.

Second, the background has too much contract. It conflicts with the face for the viewers attention. A defocus on the background would help to isolate it as well.

Greg

[BabbleGrabble]

I don't know if this what you're necessarily going for, but I gave it a shot by converting to CMYK and adjusting the curves of each channel separately. I played around with some duplicate layers with masks to bring out more contrast.

[Gaussian]

Removed red color cast, pushed up brightness/contrast but kept highlights intact, did a tiny bit of highpass sharpening.
I wanted to keep as much image data as possible intact.

[BabbleGrabble]

Nice work, Gaussian - looks great.
}$

[ptaverner]

Sorry if I'm late. I just found this forum the other day. :)

http://www.petertaverner.com/posts/womanred-pt.jpg
Peter

[Ranoka]

I thought that by lightening the model you loose some of the character of the photo. Since she has got that red skin tone from being out in Earth elements. So I thought it might be more effective to change the colour of the barn/building to make the model stand out more. Unless of course for some reason the barn/building has to be red... This is a really rough quick example edit:

[Hannu Hurme]

Hehe, that's nice Ranoka, but don't you think she looks bit pissed off now? :lol:

[Ranoka]

Hannu:
He he, she does look pissed off doesn't she!