Open to ideas for this shot...

[johnastovall]

I would like to bring the waitress out just a little but keep the overall low key cool ambiance of the shoot. Suggestion of things to try?

[RandySmith]

John -

If you have the CS3 Beta, try to open the JPG as camera Raw then boost the exposure color temp, for her skin tones. Then use the recovery slider to lower the blown out highlights in the glass. And of course you can change other settings in the camera Raw dialog boxes as well to your liking. This new feature in CS3 is really great that allows you to edit JPG's, TIFF's, etc., in ACR.

Randy

[Duffy Pratt]

Here's what I did, which I think is in the direction you are going.

First I applied a false profile with a 1.8 gamma. This lightened up everything a bit while keeping the colors very good.

I wrote curves in RGB. The goal of the curves was threefold: 1) Bring up the whitest part of the styrofoam cup and get some of the blue out of it (I almost neutralized it). 2) Keep the darkest shadows in her hair a dark brown; and 3) get the cyan out of the skin tones and put the yellow higher than the magenta. This got the waitress skin going pretty well, but it made the nice background lights a bit too bright.

So the next (and last) step I took was to find a decent mask. I chose the blue channel which had some nice contrast between the skin and everything else. I wrote a curve on the blue channel to lighten up the face alot and darken the dark areas. Then I blurred the hell out of it (gaussian blur with maybe a radius of 10). I used this as a mask for the curves. It let through the skin tone changes, and most of the light changes, but kept the overall darkness I think you were looking for.

That's what I would do, before doing shadow/highlights and sharpening. If you want, I could post what I've got, but I won't without first getting your permission.

Nice shot, BTW.

Duffy

[johnastovall]

Thanks guys for the ideas. I'll be starting back to the raw. Duffy, your suggestion just makes me see my need to learn more about masking...

[Duffy Pratt]

I think if you really came to grips with the kind of edge masking that Fraser talks about in his sharpening book, you would be way ahead of the pack on masking. Someday, I'm going to get, and work through, Eisman's book on the subject.

Duffy

[The Loft Studios]

That's what I would suggest, Mask out the Waitress and make your changes.....

[Duffy Pratt]

If you simply mask out the waitress, it will in all probability look like that is what you did. The trick is to find a way to mask out the waitress and not make it look like that is what you did.

(And of course by mask out, I really mean mask out everything else).

Duffy

[The Loft Studios]

If he wants to simply change the contrast and color just a little bit in order to make the waitress pop while keeping the background as is (overall low key cool ambiance) as he says, then masking out the waitress is the only way. Going back thru ACR will change the over all image. If you want to change just the waitress, then masking her is the most efficient way to go.

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by Duffy Pratt

I think if you really came to grips with the kind of edge masking that Fraser talks about in his sharpening book, you would be way ahead of the pack on masking. Someday, I'm going to get, and work through, Eisman's book on the subject.

Duffy

Interesting book, I just ordered an ILL copy to look over...