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When you crop/size down, try to make sure you're enabled for "Bicubic Sharper (Best for Reduction)" which should keep the base looking crisp when it gets down to 100x100.

I've found that it's effective to try to do some adjustment layers. Anon mentioned using curves but you can stack up curves and uses the masks with different curves to only (try) lightning certain parts. You can cheat a little bit by going into the mask window and trying to feather out the edges more to blend it.

What I found helps is:

1). Curve adjustment layers to try to brighten it up. Your shadows might get too bright
2). Exposure adjustment layer to make a little bit more contrast, darken the shadows after curves
3). Selective coloring like anon said, focusing especially on Neutrals and Blacks (possibly White as well if the faces look a little flat). Also playing around with Vibrance or Hue/Saturation if your colors got funky like on the lips.

After that, Select and Copy Merged and then post it in another 100x100 file. Basically you might have a lot of noise and I'm not sure if your PS can do it (I work on CS4). You could try to make an Reduce Noise action by going into filters and playing with the settings. That'll try to reduce the noise and grain but preserve some of the details.

1). Copy Merge of the colors
2). Paste into new file
3). Duplicate Image - on bottom image, Reduce Noise
4). Erase/mask out the grainy parts you want to be smooth on the top image.

Hope that helps? But yeah, batches with adjustment layers can definitely save a ton of time, if you divide by scene into folders with their own adjustment layers. Another thing to try to is divide the bases into which camera it seems to be on so the lighting is always the same (ie if two people are talking but the light seems different on them - they might need their own adjustment layers for those camera angles).

Edited 2014-04-05 22:28 (UTC)

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Re: ICON/GRAPHICS & CODE/HTML HELP