Thread: PP Help on Newborn Shoot

Hi Ladies! I apologize for being so scarce- two kids and dh being out of town and working full time is kicking my butt... Anyway, I did a nb shoot for a friend of mine- the little girl was so cute and only 6.5 lbs at 2 weeks- she was born at 36 weeks and was in the NICU for about a week. Anyway, I'm struggling with making the pictures look "finished" if that makes sense. I have photoshop elements 7.0. Can you give me any tips for getting that creamy look on the skin? Shot with natural light from a window...

1/100, f 2.0, iso 400:

Okay, let me add a few more from this set so you can see more of what I'm talking about...or is it just me? (the settings are all about the same as the first one I posted) What are these missing? HHCC please- my big girl panties are on!

1.


2.


3. And one just for fun- focus I think is a little off, but baby had had enough at this point!

Jenny, these are lovely! I think the color looks fine to me. That's by eye, not by numbers. As far as creamy, she looks nice as she is. I am not sure I'd mess with her skin. The newborn I did had a lot of baby acne so I did some smoothing on him on a couple of his photos.

I love the first one! Very nice. I have no advice about how to make it look more "finished" I think you did a great job with this session!

Cute shots! I played some, and these are on my private Flickr. She was pretty pink, so I pulled some of that out with a color balance layer by adding some green and yellow. Then bumped up the curves in the middle, and masking back some of the white places. I then ran a noiseware program (there are free ones like Noise Ninja). It's not technically skin smoothing, but it works.
Also, on the first one, there is a spot of yellow on her shoulder and it goes onto the background like where your watermark is. Did you maybe edit something out there?
The second one I did, I also selected the lower part of her face and did a color balance layer there as well since she was a little more red there.




ETA: now that I'm looking at them together, it looks like my edits are little different in the colors...but you get the idea.

Originally Posted by ELeigh

Cute shots! I played some, and these are on my private Flickr. She was pretty pink, so I pulled some of that out with a color balance layer by adding some green and yellow. Then bumped up the curves in the middle, and masking back some of the white places. I then ran a noiseware program (there are free ones like Noise Ninja). It's not technically skin smoothing, but it works.
Also, on the first one, there is a spot of yellow on her shoulder and it goes onto the background like where your watermark is. Did you maybe edit something out there?
The second one I did, I also selected the lower part of her face and did a color balance layer there as well since she was a little more red there.




ETA: now that I'm looking at them together, it looks like my edits are little different in the colors...but you get the idea.

Ahh! See- that's what it needed! Thanks- I love your plays! I'll try to go figure out the layers and masking- that intimidates me... As far as the editing- I didn't edit anything out, so I'm not sure what's going on there... ETA- it looks like a strange shadow...

Okay, I can't find anything called a color balance layer. I see a "color" option for layers, but then I don't know what to do after that.

With the color thing that you found, are there three sliders? One with cyan and red, one with magenta and green, then one with yellow and blue?
If so, just slide the magenta/green one over just a tiny bit toward the green, then the yellow/blue one a tiny bit toward the yellow.

Sweet captures. I see the pink, but I like the edits that Erica did. She's one cutie!

Originally Posted by ELeigh

With the color thing that you found, are there three sliders? One with cyan and red, one with magenta and green, then one with yellow and blue?
If so, just slide the magenta/green one over just a tiny bit toward the green, then the yellow/blue one a tiny bit toward the yellow.

No, it just comes up as a type of layer, like a soft light layer, an overlay layer, a color layer. There is an option in the menu for color variations that has sliders. I can correct red, blue, green in that and apply it to either midtones, shadows, highlights, or saturation. If I do that, do I need to select just baby's skin?