[Leica] Portraits that I'm proud of

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

Thank you all for your comments.

Jim said:

> Are your clients pleased with the sharpness?  Many older folks seem to 
> appreciate a softer image.

Mark said:

> an inch too much space above her head in my opinion.

These aren't quite print masters. When people order prints, I crop and 
soften as needed. The cropping for a 5x7 isn't quite the same as the 
cropping for an 8x10, and I like to leave a little extra room for such crops.

It's easy to get rid of sharpness in Photoshop. It's much harder to bring it 
back. So in these proof masters I leave it there, though for older clients I 
usually hand them paper proofs that are suitably softened. Usually I set a 
mask over the eyes and any jewelry and shirt buttons (the Photoshop Magic 
Wand is your friend) and then do a slight Gaussian blur on the rest of the 
image.

Brian