some photoshop advice please

[scarlet artemis]

[IMG] IMGP5259 by scarlet artemis, on Flickr[/IMG]

Hi, I'm very new to photography and took a photo of a dancer friend who REALLY likes this photo - I'm just wondering how I get the shiny spot off the tiles next to her right knee? And to change the color of the tiles and/or white balance of the photo altogether? I have photoshop elements 10 and portrait pro as editing software. Any advice or edits appreciated! Thanks, Vanessa

[Rattus79]

First thing I'd do is crop it in closer. Get rid of some of that excess wall.

The shiny bits? Clone brush tool is your frind. Big brush size, very soft edges, 50% flow (give or take)

Other thought: With the closer crop, a Vignette may help to hide it and pull attention back to the girl.

[mongo]

Mongo agrees with Greg.

Not sure if Elements 10 has a tool that can be used to change colour of the tiles. However, you may not need to if some of the ideas Greg mentioned make that less necessary.

[Hawthy]

Hi Scarlet,

I cropped this as the previous members suggested. I used Elements 8 to change the colour hue (white balance) by using Enhance> Adjust Colour > Remove Colour Cast and then using the eyedropper to pick out the colour on the white of the writing of her shirt. I then increased the sharpness by using a filter on a third party application, Fractalius. But you still did the artistic part. A very nicely framed shot. Nice and well done.

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Plus, if you want to get a little "arty"...
[
Stretch by ..andy., on Flickr]
I couldn't figure out how to reduce the file enough to place on the Ausphotogrphy site so I put it on Flickr and then linked it. Please let me know if this crosses any lines and I will remove it immediately. This was a simple Sketch master filter.

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Sorry, but the photos above are clearly in the wrong order. The lower photo was the first edit and the upper was the second - hope that make sense.

[fillum]

[IMG]And to change the color of the tiles and/or white balance of the photo altogether?

The image looks to have a yellowish cast so in my opinion needs some adjustment. If you shot the image in raw, the best way to correct the white balance is by using the white-balance sliders (or a preset) when you do the raw conversion. If you shot in jpeg there still several ways to correct the colour in photoshop.

[I have an ancient version of Elements (v4) so I don't know if the same functions are still available in newer versions (I'd assume they would be) and I also don't know if there are now easier ways to make the changes.]

- if the image contains an area that should be neutral (either black, white or grey) you can use the "Remove Color Cast" function. For example if the wall in your image should be white you click on the wall and Elements will adjust the colours (across the whole image) so that the wall colour changes to neutral.

- another function "Adjust Color for Skin Tone" allows you to click on an area of skin and Elements adjusts the colours (of the whole image) so that the skin colour looks (somewhat) correct. This often takes a bit of trial and error - you might need to click on different areas of skin and use the "Reset" each time if it doesn't look better.

- you can try "Auto Color Correction" or "Auto Levels" (or both) - these sometimes work (but often make things worse)

- you can alter the colour of individual channels (Red / Green / Blue) in the "Levels" adjustment function, but this method can be a bit complex if you aren't experienced with it

Anyhow, a few methods there which hopefully should help...



Cheers.

[mongo]

Mongo does not know what the colour of the wall or floor was but it clearly has a cast.
#1 is removal of some of the cast and other tweaks you mentioned plus a crop.

dancer-1.jpg

#2 is just a high key experiment of "the dancer" where the floor and other things are of no importance - just the subject in a semi-abstract form

dancer-2.jpg

Unfortunately all of this was quickly done in photoshop so it may not help your specific query. It Mongo's understanding that elements 10 is pretty darn good and has of lots of useful tool that possibly could do the job - Mongo just does not know enough about that program to say.

[scarlet artemis]

Thanks to all of you for your help! I have elements 10 which isn't a bad program, but what I was hoping to achieve is better off done with CS5. Why don't they combine all these great programs into one? All of you have done amazing edits and given some wonderful advice...and andy, doesn't cause a problem being loaded onto Flickr, as anyone else coming across this post may learn something. I have taken a copy of the photo and showed it to the model, it has my digital signature embedded in it so I'm not too worried but a lesson to me to watermark everything! Thanks again guys