converting to this style?

squareballoon

Can anyone tell me how I can get this sort of look with my pictures. ie high contrast without blowing out the whites
I've got photoshopCS2. I've looked everywhere for some sort of action and although there are lots of tutorials out these it's this specific look I'm after.

5uspect

Curves!

Here a more in-depth tutorial
http://www.dphclub.com/tutorials/portrait-photo-retouching-photoshop-tutorial

*Dallas

she has a section for photographers questions:

http://dawnm.com/fresh/faqs-photographers/

fairly usefull as she lists the lighting & lenses she uses!

squareballoon

thanks for the replies. I've tried the action she's given on her site and it works well but still doesn't give quite the look she has. I expect she's starting with a higher quality image.
curves works well too. Probably better in black and white than colour but I still can't get the high contrast without some sort of negitive effect on the image.
thanks again

smelltheglove

I think theres a bit more going on in there too though. I mean the shots are quite highly processed. The skin is smoothed on all the children and imo the eyes have lost life due to some of the work that has been done to them.

Maybe if you have a shot that you want to get the effect on you could upload and we may be able to help more. Depending on shots I would use the birghtness/contrast or I could use curves or saturation adjustment. There are still some blown out areas in some of those shots too. They are very good shots though just lost a lot due to pp.

squareballoon

ok say on an image like this of my daughter.
I've also put a bigger version here

smelltheglove

She's gorgeous, get to work on it now.

smelltheglove

Ok there was a few bits with this, there is histogram adjustment, moving the notch slightly to the darker side but then brightening, thus stopping bits from being blown out. Adjusting brightness and contrast -1 and 5 respectively, smoothing skin at 77 and curves and then a little bit of highlight midtone shadow, bringing back lost detail in darker areas whilst retaining the contrast in mid and lighter areas.

All this is done in paintshop pro but pretty similar to ps.

squareballoon

thanks so much for doing that! I like it. Is histogram the same as levels? Also what did you use for the skin smoothing? I really like the way the eyes look. thanks again.

smelltheglove

No probs. histogram isnt the same as the levels, now I'm not really technical so i dont know the exact phrases but since i'm a mammy with little kids i do baby talk well;) The histogram is similar to changing the exposure, you can brigten and darken without losing the tone the way you would if you just used the brightness control. You can also adjust the gamma.

Levels on the other hand will brighten and darken but it will also affect the colours and can change them slightly(not sure how but it does).

The skin smoothing is an option which my program has which is corel paint shop, as far as I'm aware photo shop doesnt have this exact control. I might be wrong. It 'cleans' and softens the skin without actually having a softening affect on the high detail areas such as clothing hair and eyes. It also calms noise sometimes and this is the main reason I love paint shop so much as I love this control.:p

oh also the eyes have not been changed at all it is the pp on the image which makes them seem more attractive.