Week 1 - Workflow discussion revisited....

[ggroess]

Outstanding to me: image is underexposed. I use  PS CS3 and can open a .jpg file in camera Raw.
Step 1 Editing in camera Raw:(i) Pushed exposure slider to +2.20 (ii) Fill light slider to 40 (iii) Boosted the mid tone contrast by clarity slider to +30
Step 2 Editing in PS -> CM in Lab mode: (i) Set the shadow, highlight and neutral (ii) check skin tones... which is OK here (iii) saturation slider to 1.30 to boost the colour
Step 3 sharpening and save image

That was very close to how i handled it in my workflow.  I did not mess with the fill light in ACR I just used the CM tool to make my adjustments...

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Here was my approach to this image.

1.  Because the image was horribly underexposed, I started by dragging the highlight threshold to the left, until I started seeing some specks of highlight.  The white part of the upper boy's shirt was the key.
2.  I would do the same on the shadow side, but there is no room in this image.
3.  Next I looked for something I could confidently assign a neutral to.  I used the lower boy's T-shirt, which I assume is white.
4.  Then I pinned a skin tone on the lower boy's forearm.
5.  Next I used the ab saturation slider to pop up the color a bit.
6.  Finally, I lifted the upper part of the L channel a bight to further brighten the image.  There wasn't much room here because of the severe underexposure in the original image.

Result looks surprisingly good, given the original.