Reply To: Bring your Rolaids

[ebi]

browneyedgirl is absolutely right. I cannot look at your website b/c the background is so distracting. Websites for photography should never outshine, in any way, the work. Neutral shades of grey. Reserve color for the logo only, as long as the logo is not distracting. I find that the more distracting the logo, the bigger fauxtog.

So I think pretty much everything has been covered above. I think you are quite aware of a lot of stuff too. I feel like your last post about the kid was just a bunch of excuses as to why you didn’t do a good job. If I was that parent and I was paying you for those pictures, I don’t think the excuses would mean much to me. Although I’d probably be very understanding, knowing that my kid was difficult and special needs and all that. I think those pictures are ok. Most of what I see is just ok. Not overwhelming, a little underwhelming at times. I actually have lots of just ok shoots that clients are still really happy with. Those are jobs where I make some money but those images don’t get published with my name anywhere near that.

Selective color is a typical fauxtog mistake. There are instances where it’s done well and with purpose (The gatorade ads come to mind), but it’s rare.

Vignettes…Here’s how I do vignettes in photoshop. I share it with everyone as long as the inverse is never done. I hate white vignettes.

1.) open image in photoshop
2.) create new layer by going to Layer > New > Layer (shift+cmd+n)
3.) make sure it is above background layer and name it vignette or something meaningful
4.) click on the rectangular marquee tool. choose a feather depth of 250-500 px (you will have to work on the right amount of this by playing around with the numbers). Draw the marquee from edge to edge all the way around the image.
5.) go to Select > Inverse (shift+cmd+i)
6.) Choose paint bucket too (g) and choose black as your foreground color. Click inside of the marquee (marching ants)
7.) Deselect the image by going to Select > Deselect (cmd+d). You’ll notice a very fake and flat looking vignette around the image. This is what most peoples vignettes look like, except they tend to go even more overboard (more of a feather, stronger black).
8.) In layers, make sure you are clicked on your vignette layer.
9.) Under Blending modes, choose soft light. Subtle vignette.

Now you need to brighten the middle of the frame to make it feel a little more natural.

10.) reselect your vignette by going to Select > reselect. If this doesn’t work, you can also cmd+click on your vignette layers little checked icon in the layers panel.
11.) Create new layer by going to Layer > New > Layer (shift+layer+n). Name it something meaningful like “inside vignette”
12.) Select inverse by going to Select > Inverse (shift+cmd+i)
13.) Choose Paint Bucket again (g) and then choose white as foreground color
14.) Drop white in the center. You’ll notice the center goes opaque white. You’ll fix this in the next step.
15.) In the layers panel, make sure you have the “inside” layer selected.
16.) Under Blending modes choose Overlay. Now you’ll notice that the image is way bright. Change the opacity to the right of the Blending modes drop down box and bring it down so that it’s not overly bright but matches well for the rest of the image.

If you want it stronger, you can duplicate the vignette layer and then reduce opacity on that layer. You can also make the edges a bit darker, initially by drawing your bounding box within the image slightly inside of the frame instead of edge to edge (step 4).