I have been instructed to submit a photograph for a profile to be included in an information booklet of sorts at work.
All I did here was hang a fairly cheap backdrop on the wall near a big window (allowing for quite a bit of natural light), and took a quick shot with my HP 945 (yes, an outdated camera, but has served me well).
Anyway, I'm hardly an amateur with photography, much less portrait photography.
I am hoping someone who enjoys working with a photo-editing program can make this picture the best it can be. I'm not all that happy with it and I'll go to a portrait studio if I have to, but wanted to see what you magicians could do first.
That's a pretty decent picture except for the BG, actually. Here I have laid a gradient down over a white layer, pasted a copy of the image over that layer, selected the BG and deleted it from the image, allowing the gradient to show though. Pretty straightforward. The selection isn't perfect if you get in close to it, but not bad for a lo-res original. It would probably suffice as-is for a small, website head shot.
The gradient color, of course, could be anything...
plyed with color adjustments for skin tones, cropped off the top and then duplicate layer and used gaussian blur with masked for eyes and mouth at around 20%. A curves layer also for contrast and to brighten up the image anit.
I first sharpened with FocusMagic. It seemed too soft.
Then I simply selected the background, deleted it, and pasted it on a muslim background grabbed from the net (I used this to do my daughters senior portrait).
I oversharpened the iris's of the eyes (trick from Scott Kelby)
I dodged the iris a bit too (trick from DPC)
I applied a 31% overlay of channel mixer to pop the colors a bit (using Debbie Grossman's Velvia trick.
And viola:
EDIT: Whoops. I forgot to reduce the background to match before pasting, that's why it doesn't look crisp. Reapplied it. Make sure you refresh your browser after clicking if you already visited the shot)
---to ---> (Open each and switch between them in the taskbar to see changes)
One of the first things that I didn't like was the harshness of the blue & cyan in his shirt stripes. In a new layer via copy, I lightly desaturated the area around his collar (on his right), manually desaturated the white areas between the stripes that bled over with cyan, overall dropped the blue & cyan saturation levels, then erased the tie back in to contrast it against the shirt, then flattened.
Made a new layer via copy, dragged an oval marquis around his eyes and adjusted the brightness & contrast up a little, including some of the area under each eye. I erased & feathered in the skin areas, and erased up close to the whites of the eyes on the sides and top. Flattened.
Made a new layer via copy, dragged a circle around each iris, brought up the contrast & brightness a bit, deasturated the whites of his eyes manually with the sponge tool, fixed the catchlights a bit to lessen them and make them even, then flattened.
Made a new layer via copy, raised the brightness on the left side of the picture to act like a fill light was on his left, and blended into the right side, then flattened.
Made some small changes to the skin tone, conntrast & brightness, some selective sharpening around the eyes and mouth.
Made a new layer, multiply mode, did a circular gradient, adjusting the levels, then erased his face, shirt and jacket, then flattened.
