Originally Posted by anonymouscuban Started with this RAW image in LR3... This is the result. The entire process took me about 15 minutes:

And what a result!

Found this thread and know it needs resurrecting!

Let's make it sticky for a bit.

Originally Posted by angevin1 And what a result! Found this thread and know it needs resurrecting!

Ditto!

Neil

Originally Posted by anonymouscuban Let's make it sticky for a bit.

Great idea!

Diva asked me what I am doing lately to the eyes of my subjects to make them sharp and give them pop. I wish I could say that it's all in-camera technique but I'd be lying. It goes without saying that you must start with getting the eyes well in focus in camera. Nothing will help get eyes ultra-sharp in post if you don't get it right in camera. Trust me, I've tried many times to sharpen OOF'd eyes only to end up with pixelated and OOF'd eyes.

I thought I would take a few minutes to put together a tutorial with my workflow. I'm including a few screen shots to aide understanding. It seems a bit involved but once I got these ingredients down and created Actions for them and only takes a couple clicks and a few brush strokes to get it done. So why don't I get started with trying to thoroughly confuse you; I'm not very good at this sort of thing.

NOTE: OH... I should mention that I am doing this all in Photoshop CS4, which I use as a plugin from LR3.

BEFORE PHOTO SOOC - you can see all the layers/steps here but they are turned off



Close-Up


Step 1 - Clone & Heal

The first thing I do is create a duplicate layer of the original image. I use this layer to heal and clone any imperfection in the skin, wild hairs in the face and any other distractions. In this case, I used the healing brush to clean up the little pimple on her chin and also to get rid of the highlight on her left cheek and tip of nose. I also cloned out the spa drain and the bit of green showing in the top right corner of the photo. BTW, once I use the clone tool on these spots, I then go over them with the healing brush just to smooth things out. This is a trick I learned that I find very useful.

Clone & Heal After - No Drain/No Green


Close Up (100%) - Pimple and Highlights Gone


Step 2 - Eye Bump

The next step is to brighten the eyes a bit. I do this by adding a levels adjustment layer with the properties below. I then invert the mask and take a small soft brush, set to about 12% opacity and 70% flow and paint the whites of eyes to my liking. You can also use this to brighten the teeth. Sometimes I will finish by adjusting the overall opacity of this layer to fine tune the adjustment. It's important not to over do it. I like turning the layer on and off just to see the effect to make sure I didn't go overboard.

Levels Properties


Eye Bump After - Eyes are just a tad brighter:


Step 3 - Eye Pop

This next steps adds some contrast to the eyes to make them pop a bit. I merge a copy of all visible layers into a target layer (CMD+Option+Shift+E). I then apply the Unsharp Mask Filter to this layer. I follow this up with a levels adjustment layer and merge it with the unsharp mask layer. I then apply a Layer Mask and invert it (CMD+I). Then I take a small soft brush with same properties as in step 2 and paint the effect onto the iris of the eye, eyelids, eyebrows and lips. I also apply it to the parts of the hair that are in focus. Again, make sure not to go overboard. Just a few light strokes is enough. You can always adjust the overall opacity of the layer to your liking if you do.

Unsharp Mask Properties


Levels Properties


Eye Pop Close Up


Step 4 - Eye Sharpen

This is the final step that will really make the eyes come alive. Again, I use the CMD+Option+Shift+E shortcut to create a target layer from all the previous layers. I then apply the Unsharp Mask Filter to this layer but this time I use much different parameters. I then add a layer mask to it and invert it. Just like before, I take a small soft brush to selectively sharpen the eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, mouth and hair.

Unsharp Mask Properties


Eye Sharpen Close Up


Here is the is the before and after for comparison:

Before


After

Beautiful Work 'Cuban'! Love those photographer-shaped pupils!

Hmm this is a really good thread to make sticky. I love doing tutorials about my brain work. I will put something together one some of my Image editing techniques.

great stuff guys, loved the soldier in the lake , cool after efect sneak peek.

I really need to get better at my LR3 I keep going back and forth on CS5 and I know much less of CS5 compared to LR3 but this results are very reassuring about capability of LR3 (well now LR4 :) )
With regards to getting rid of that arrow - cant you do that in LR3 with simple heal/clone tool ?
For this kind of simple fixes I like LR3 (probably because I'm not good at CS5 :( )
Thanks for sharing your work.

Originally Posted by ivar And I guess I'll kick it off; Before: This image to me said "black and white". Sometimes I mix my own black and white, but I have a few presets that I use as well. I used "B&W platinum" (in Lightroom, didn't come as a standard preset, i'll see if I can figure out where it did come from) for this one: It's a start, but it is missing something. I played with the curves a bit and I brightened his eyes a bit (brush in Lightroom, up exposure 0.2 just a bit less on his right eye to match them better): Then I did something that I rarely do, I took the image to Photoshop (I really rarely get out of Lightroom). I took away the arrow pointing up his nose and the corner-plastic thingy. I also blurred the wrinkles in the canvas a bit. A little bit more curves in LR, a small crop, et voila:

Great detailed edit on CS4 cuban, thanks for this. It will help me learn Photoshop better.

I accidentally uploaded an unedited shot so I decided to throw it in here.

The shot was done with a D700 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VRI. SB-900 flash was off to camera left in a large shoot through umbrella. Flash was just outside the frame, maybe 6 feet away and about 8 feet high.

EXIF: 1/80 @ f/4; ISO 100; 125mm focal length


The shot above is straight out of camera. Originally shot in RAW so the it's a bit soft all around. Post work was as follows:

1. Duplicate layer
2. Clean up blemishes and a few wrinkles on face with cloning tool
3. Run Imagenomics Portraiture plugin on Normal default preset
4. Set Portraitue layer to 50% opacity
5. Create new layer with all edits and apply Smart Sharpen filter (81%, 4px, Lens Blur)
6. Curves layer adjustment to set black point
7. Another curves layer with gradient mask to add vignette
8. Unsharp filter mask and then painted on hair, eyes and lips with 10% opacity soft brush to add just a little pop
9. Back to Lightroom and then slight crop.

Finished Shot:

Having been there,,,, navy trained... His hair should have been wet for goodness sakes...