Can someone help me with this?

[Iguanasan]

I'll have my go at answering a few of these questions as well. Hopefully, it won't be a case of too many cooks. I'll try to cover just the points that I thought MA and Marko didn't cover.

Shooting in raw for sure, on the picture setting issue, i'm using a customized version of lanscape actually, probably the wrong one for what i want because saturation is boosted way up on it, should i be in standard? the orange was initially due to the setting sun with absolutely no clouds, and then when i edited it i boosted it it some more, way too much obviously wich created the orange, no filter, oddly enough, no flash at all, not sure where the glimmer in the eyes came from, i hnestly don't recall my white balance setting, but likely auto, do you think some colour balance tool might be useful for me? like maybe a greycard?, please, have atter for editing, see what you can do, i can even email you the original if this is to compressed to do much with it
appreciate anything you have for advice and results, i have been playing around with more neutral picture style settings and that has me a little closer

Picture settings on your Canon T1i will have no effect on the RAW image so you might as well set it to Standard for those few times when you want to shoot JPG. Picture settings are applied to the RAW image to turn it into a JPG in-camera.

Marko already covered it but I'll confirm. I generally always shoot with Auto White Balance as well and if it's not quite right and you are shooting RAW then it can be adjusted in post.

I've sent you my email address along with a link to https://wetransfer.com/ to transfer what should be a 15MB CR2 file via a private message (PM).

Shortly after i got my t1i i learned the hard way to always shoot in raw, i lost out on an incredible opportunity with a lynx in a tree enjoying a feast of rabbit on a winter morning, it was incredible, i stood under the tree for at least 45 minutes shooting, and got nothing but junkie shots, i almost cried when i got home, shoot in raw ever since that religously, and edit raw as well

Some of the people here can do amazing things with post processing... I hope you didn't delete those images, maybe someone can help?

Wow, thank you so much for your advice, looking at the photo i did while using your points as a checklist i see clearer now what i need to do and look for in shooting, and do less of in editing, i've already experimented with neutral picture style settings and that has helped, do you suggest some sort of white balance tool like a "cap" or greycard, as apposed to trying to match the few automatic settings on the camera? i shot this using my 70-200 f4L but at 70mm, i see your point about getting back and zooming in, as well as the proximity to the background for the subjects, these are actually 2 of my employees and i love them to death, sweet couple and i wanted to get them some great shots, they are letting me shoot again this weekend but it is supposed to be similar conditions as this shot, so i think i will do some scouting and find somewhere with either some "sun blockage" like a canopy of trees, or do you think that a complete even shade would be good as well? i have a 5 in 1 reflector wich also acts as a difuser if i take the coloured sleeve off, i can maybe difuse if i need to, or reflect to fill as you suggested, Thank all of you very much for your advice, my last shots i asked for critique on were just not in focus, and i have worked on that since, i hope that the focus in this sample is much better

MA covered this point well with regards to even shade etc.

just out of curiousity, what is it that made all of you believe i was shooting jpeg? you all brought it up, so there must be something in the image that tips you off to that, is it an image quality thing? sometimes i notice, but not as much with my L lens, that i get strange and unwanted colours on edges where they shouldn't be, too saturated maybe? thanks

The reason I had thought you shot in JPG was because the very orange colour of the image (seemed worse on my work computer) seemed like a camera setting gone awry vs a purposeful edit in post processing of a RAW file.

MA covered the chromatic aberration issue quite well I think but what I'll add is that if you make sure you have even lighting within the image you'll dramatically reduce this issue. This is probably the main issue you had with the lynx as I've had it dealing with birds in the trees and a bright sky behind them.

[Iguanasan]

Just got your original. It would be better if the background bokeh was done in camera by putting more distance between your subject and the background and adjusting the depth of field to keep only them in focus but you can fake it a bit with a Gaussian blur in Gimp (Photoshop). Your RAW file is fine. Whatever you did to convert it to JPG caused the orange cast so I'm not sure what your work flow is like. I'll describe what I did to the image below.

1) Opened in Gimp (which starts me off in ufRAW to convert from RAW).
2) In UFRaw I adjusted the base curve a bit to brighten it up and I cropped it to remove the building in the background.
3) I save those changes and move to Gimp. (free image editor)
4) In Gimp, I first selected their eyes and added 10% brightness and applied a slight unsharp mask.
5) Then I adjusted the brightness and contrast using the curves tool to adjust the black level.
6) I applied the unsharp mask to the entire image to sharpen it a bit.
7) I then used the scissors tool to outline the couple and then inverted the selection so I would have the background selected.
8) I feathered the selection by about 100 pixels and applied a Gaussian blur of 50 points to the background.
9) Then I saved it as a JPG at 100% quality.
10) Then exported one for uploading at 1024 pixels wide at 95% (233KB which is under the 250KB limit for getting munged by the software.

[Mad Aussie]

Good job Iggy!

[lenfisher1973]

Wow, that turned out much better than my post did, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your workflow as well, some very useful tips for sure, i really like the work you did on the eyes especially, and the subjects in general, they now "pop" and i like that, what i like the most is how your post appears to be "seemless" and natural, proper selection is key i imagine, thank you very much for your help and to all of the others as well, again, wonderful tips and advice on everything to settings, and white balance, to composition and finally editing, I rarely if ever delete my raw files unless they are absolute junk or "premature" firings of my feet on the ground, hehehe, 1TB hard drives are awesome

[Iguanasan]

Good job Iggy!

Thanks, MA.

Wow, that turned out much better than my post did, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your workflow as well, some very useful tips for sure, i really like the work you did on the eyes especially, and the subjects in general, they now "pop" and i like that, what i like the most is how your post appears to be "seemless" and natural, proper selection is key i imagine, thank you very much for your help and to all of the others as well, again, wonderful tips and advice on everything to settings, and white balance, to composition and finally editing, I rarely if ever delete my raw files unless they are absolute junk or "premature" firings of my feet on the ground, hehehe, 1TB hard drives are awesome

Thanks, Len. That's what we're here for. Helping each other.

[Marko]

Thanks, MA.



Thanks, Len. That's what we're here for. Helping each other.

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