Not quite a submission...

[BarstoolProphet]

I've made myself a teeny little 'light box', using two sheets of paper and some scotch tape.
Oddly, it actually seems to have helped a little bit.

This piece is just about finished, needing the edges of the base blacked again, or maybe extended.
There's a bit of shine to it, so maybe another layer of dulcote, too, but she's coming along.

The close-up was the toughest one to get clear for me. That little bit of red on the right of her mouth,
I can't even see without the digital magnification. And I just got my glasses prescription updated.

Ok, let's see if I can make the pictures show up in the post, now, instead of needing links...

I lack photoshop since my hard drive had to be completely replaced, so I'm at a bit of a loss on how to do any prettying up of the image, beyond the cheap software that came with the camera. The paper behind her should be white, but no matter what I do, it still looks yellow/brown, no matter how I set the camera's white balance.
Maybe it's my monitor? Any ideas? Helpful hints?

 

[Chrome]

Pretty sure it's not your monitor:

One step in the right direction would be to use less yellow light bulbs. I'm guessing the ones you are using now are 2800~ish Kelvin colour-wise, what you need is something that's 5500 K and beyond. Can't help you with camera settings though, there are people here that are loads better than I am about that anyway. But when it comes to editing software, go download GIMP, a freeware substitute to photoshop, so you basically get to do what you do in photoshop without risking getting in trouble for not paying for it.

 

[kizume]

The best way to make your images look prettier, faster,and cheaper is to buy daylight bulbs for two lamps, then put a white sheet of paper between the lamp and the mini, one lamp on either side of the mini. This will cut out a good bit of the yellow, soften any glare that might come up from the direct lighting and create a general light "glow" around your figure.

 

[Tercha]

Take your light box outside, and use daylight on a cloudy day instead of artificial light

 

[BPI]

I just copied your image & bunged it into GIMP for similar reuslt to Chrome.

Click on the COLOURS menu, select LEVELS, click the AUTO button, if it looks better, SAVE!

When that doesn't help, COLOURS menu again, BRIGHTNESS-CONTRAST, tickle the contrast up 5 or 10 & see if it's better.

That's as much as I do with my pics, if the above don't work, reshoot. If you have your special daylight bulb shining on your mini, do experiment with turning the other lights in the room off, it's occasionally helped me before.

If your camera has options for shooting under daylight/incandescent/flourescent then take a sequence of shots with each setting & see which suits your lamp best.

You could also try, in addition to the white paper, stacking a pot each of Blood Red, Golden Yellow & Enchanted Blue to the side of the mini (to be cropped out later) to try & help your camera take a picture of what's actually there instead of bloody auto-adjusting for what it thinks is there!

Good luck :good:

Cheers, B.

PS just realised the post is old but I've typed this out, so you're getting it regardless

 

[Chrome]

Is this threadomancy or just plain life support? :rotfl: