Let's talk color correction (somewhat NSFW)

yoyoma

I was hired to take a photo for a calender put out by a bunch of sororities at my school. Over the years I have learned a great deal about photoshop, so I'd like to post my entire process when I work an image like this to see if anyone has suggestions about other things I can do and to develop my skills.

Here is the original:



Here's my process:

I take the photo in RAW mode and then look at it overall, determining my plan to work the image. Here I will crop (the before picture above is post-crop), alter the color temp (I shot flash but changed it to daylight to warm it up a bit), then I possibly sharpen, then enhance saturation a vibrance just a touch. I felt this photo was underexposed about a stop (I really hate when I can't expose properly) so I upped the exposure in RAW.

Next I open the image and duplicate the background. I heal up blemishes, moles, scars, discolorations, etc. until I am satisfied, and also possibly clone out fine lines. This model is young enough that there are almost no fine lines, save at the corners of her mouth. She is also well made-up which is super helpful in an amatuerist shoot. I might remove fly-away hairs here, but I forgot before this post. No problem with her head against black. Liquify tool if necessarily.

Next I change the color mode to LAB, open curves, and change the ins and outs of the a and b channels until the color contrasts nicely. Then I increase contrast on the lightness channel.

I shift back into RGB and do my smooth skin technique I found on this site somewhere: Duplicate layer, run a median blur at about 5 px (which will not pull the foreground into the background, as opposed to gaussian blur or lens blur), and turn the opacity down to 50%. Next I mask out everything that I want to be sharp; her eyes, mouth, nose, hair, hat, shorts, joints, fingertips, and all the background. Basically, anything that is not just skin I will leave out of the effect. I find that if you clone and heal skin imperfections properly, the smooth skin technique should be used gently. Once again, with a young model like this its not even that important.

Next I do color corrections in specific locations by making color balance adjustment layer masks. I turn the lips pink (maybe too much, you tell me), eyes green, bandana on the hat more red. I also bumped the blue of the shorts by using selective color, which was super easy as there is almost no blue elsewhere in the image.

Finally, I think the background was over-lit (another sort of mistake I hate to make), so I painstakingly masked the entire background to drop down the levels. I found this did not quite fix the problem, which was frustrating. I also did a mask on the slits of light in the dark portion of the frame to increase the light coming through, which I think worked out.

Then I look at the image again to see if I missed anything and it's time to submit. I like to sleep on it if I have time. Here is the final:



Did I do a good job? Is there anything I can do better? Does anyone get anything out of reading a post like this?

Another thing, I'd like to add another 'strip' of light across her shorts, like is across the hat. Is there an easy way to do this? I tried a bit but found it kind of hopeless.

jfriend

Very nice shot.

I was able to add a strip of light across the shorts fairly easily. Here's one way to do it.

• I created a curve adjustment layer in luminosity blend mode. Don't adjust the curve yet. Make sure the mask area in the curve adjustment layer is selected.
• Then, make a rectangular selection about the width of the stripe you want over her shorts. Extend it only a little beyond the edge of the shorts.
• Then while that selection is still active, change to the selection tool. This will allow you to rotate the selection slightly to match the angle of the one across the hat. You want it about two degrees. Apply the transformation of the selection.
• Invert the selection.
• Feather the selection to give it a soft edge (I used 5 pixels on your display copy, you may need a higher number on the original).
• Select the Bucket Fill tool. Set your foreground color to black.
• Click in the selected area (outside the stripe). You should see the mask go almost completely black except for the stripe.
• Now open the curve for that adjustment layer and pull up the center of the curve until you get the brightness of the stripe that you like. Because it's luminosity blend, it should preserve color.
• Now, select the mask area again by clicking on it in the layers palette.
• Select the brush tool and give about a 45 pixel soft-edged brush. Make sure the foreground color is black. Now gently paint around the ends of the stripe so you can confine it to just her shorts, not on the background.
• At this point, you have to decide if you like the color of the stripe. I thought that to match the one above it need to be warmed up some.
• So, I duplicated the curve adjustment layer (Ctrl-J) (you want to keep the same mask, but with a different blend mode), changed the blend mode to color and undid the curve in the new layer so now it's doing nothing.
• Now, open the curve, go to the blue channel and pull down the center of the blue curve to warm up the slit of light to your personal taste.
• You can make fine tuning adjustments by reducing the opacity on either adjustment layer if you decide it's a bit much.

All of that got me this image:

clemensphoto's

Yet another great photo. Nice job.

yoyoma

hey jfriend, thanks a ton for all that and I'll put it right to use. I assume that when you talk about the luminosity blend mode preserving color, it also means I could safely place the strip of so half is on her shorts and half on her stomach while still looking natural?

Thanks again.

jfriend

yoyoma wrote:

hey jfriend, thanks a ton for all that and I'll put it right to use. I assume that when you talk about the luminosity blend mode preserving color, it also means I could safely place the strip of so half is on her shorts and half on her stomach while still looking natural?

Thanks again.

Yes, the luminosity mode will work across stomach and shorts together.

Tee Why

I think it looks nice. But I think you may be at a point where it may start to look a bit too photoshopped if you proceed further.

yoyoma

Okay, here's my effort. I used sort of a custom brush to add some difference in strength across the stripe of light, and i added a little shadow off her shorts to give it some depth. I also tried to get it to bend with her figure a bit... I had to color correct quite a lot too. Did it work?

Andy

What work is this Not Safe For Work at?

jdryan3

yoyoma wrote:

Did it work?

I'm not sure it did. I love everything you did up to this point and jfriend's version worked, but yours on her stomach looks overly dodged. The edge seems a little too defined, and where it crosses her hip it doesn't bend (?) oh so slightly. Yours on her shorts works, just not the other part.

But man what a great job otherwise! I read all your steps before looking at the image and simply went
:jawdrop

Malte

Andy wrote:

What work is this Not Safe For Work at?

Well, it's not doing much for my productivity, I'll tell you that!

Malte