Re: OT: Photoshop Thoughts and a Question for you Experts

[Paul Stenquist]

The new version is a huge improvement. Congratulations. It's hard to 
say if you could pull up any highlights in that hair without playing 
around a bit, but I think you might have to rescan at a different 
exposure. There doesn't appear to be any highlights there to work with. 
If you had a dull highlight that you could see, you might be able to 
bring it up a little by selectively dodging just that area, probably 
with the tool set to midtones at around 10%. It's better to use a low 
percentage with this tool and make repeat passes. That way you can 
sneak up on it. Too much dodging can look artificial and muddy.
Paul
On Sep 25, 2004, at 10:05 AM, frank theriault wrote:

Well, as I told you all a few weeks ago, I finally got around to
installing Photoshop (version 6.0) a couple of weeks ago. Although I
haven't yet gotten around to getting a Photoshop for Dummies type
manual (Shel's going to send me something, and I've been very lazy
about getting to a library), I've been fooling around with it, not
knowing much what I've been doing.  At least since I've so far only
been fiddling with B&W photos, I don't have to worry about the colour
stuff, so that simplifies stuff a bit.
I must say, I'm quite blown away by what little bit I've figured out
that I can do.  You know how I'm always saying, "the scan of this
one's horrible"?  Well, it was.  Not the scan, per se, but the
software I was working with was really bad.
Here's an example of a fairly notorious shot of mine (at least
notorious to me - one of my faves).  Old scan:
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2188556&size=lg
New scan:
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2727452&size=lg
Now, someone tell me that isn't night and day!  And that's without
really knowing too much what to do.  (I did burn her ring in a bit -
kinda cool, eh? <g>)
So, here's a question:  When I first posted this one, someone (maybe
Bruce Dayton?  I can't remember) said that he suspected that there
were some highlights in the dark hair of Lucie on the left.  There
were indeed some highlights on the print, and I think they've come out
a bit better on the ps version.  If I wanted to bring those up a bit
more, how would I do it?  Any suggestions?  Everything I've tried has
looked pretty bad.  Or, should I just leave it?
I'm having so much fun with this!!  Thanks for your help.
cheers,
frank


--
"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept."  -Henri Cartier-Bresson