What Did You Do?!?!
The before/after thread that Hackbone started actually gave me the idea for this one. A similar thread, only the processing details are to be posted as well.
It is not meant to be a lengthy discussion on post processing, but rather to give other people a glimpse in to your kitchen so to speak. Everyone uses different methods, tools, software and tricks; Let's see if we can share some of those with each other!
It is not meant to be a lengthy discussion on post processing, but rather to give other people a glimpse in to your kitchen so to speak. Everyone uses different methods, tools, software and tricks; Let's see if we can share some of those with each other!
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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:
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That Speaks!
Forgive me for not looking over here Sooner Ivar. I have to watch my bandwidth since my move to the land of _insert label here___?
Anyway. My 16 y/o visiting and well boys being boys, we got right to it!
Face paint, and three mornings in a row getting out and into the lake. 54'f air temps and 74'f water, so lots of cool fog!
Photo 1 SOOC:
Did my crop in LR2 and then brought the photo into After-Effects.
Below this text is the box with the layers I used to create the final image. Bob is the images name ( not my child's name), I put a black solid layer behind him, Clouds in front of him and then added a light.
Below is a SS of the AE console. The star looking thingy to his right and off onto the gray console is the light. In this case it is a point of light. You can describe the type of light as: point, spot, and ambient. Also you get to color the light. As you may have guessed, I colored the light to the best of my ability to imitate morning thru-the-fog-light.
Below, I moved the light and annotated such to see where and how the effect somewhat works
Above, easy (?) to see how the light affects this image! Also a lesson in planning where I'd like the final light to work from. And in this I failed! When I veiw this image, I'd prefer him coming from the shadows and into the light, but using adjunct light on-set means that light ought to have been in front and at least to the right a bit, versus back and his right, which is where it was!
Below is the Paint console in AE. I used the cloudy movie to layer over him and then reversed it horizontally to get the effect I was after. Then erased thru the clouds to reveal the black solid behind him, giving him more of an appearance of coming out of the darkness (fail!) And just to more clearly present his visage.
Final image...actually I went back and got rid of the pin-lights in his eyes!
Thanks for reading!
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This is fresh out of Photoshop so I actually remember what I did to get there!
It's obvious which one is the edit and which one is SOOC...
Opened image in Camera RAW, bumped two stops in exposure, changed white balance to 6000K...
Used a brush tool on just her eyes with clarity and saturation all the way up (that brush tool has saved some shots, if you don't know where it is, pull up a shot in RAW and search for it... I'll wait....)
Used another brush on her face (sans the eyes) with clarity turned all the way down... if you click the "show mask" toggle, it makes this job a lot easier.
Opened image in PS CS4... which is where the real magic happened...
When I sharpened her eyes, I noticed that her right eye wasn't *quite* in focus as much as her left (I shot it at 2.8)... so, I opened a new document in photoshop (I think I made it 5"x5" and selected a square of her left eye and pasted it into the new document and flipped it horizontally. I pasted the "new" right eye back over the old. Now she looked REALLY freaky, so I turned down the opacity of the new eye (so I could see through it) and moved it to line up as much as I could with the one "under" it. Using a very very soft eraser, I erased around the "top" eye to make the skin match. Since nobody is completely symmetrical, I used the skew tool and the transform tool to make it as close as I could to the eye below it. It took some work, maybe 20 minutes but it saved the shot from the trash bin. There was some healing brush and clone tool involved here to get rid of some lines under her eyes. She was sick that day (minor croup) so most of her pictures took some work to get her looking like she wanted to be there.
I can't believe I'm about to give *this* secret out, but for just a *hint* of extra color pop, I used the purple/orange gradient map over everything set on very low (17/20ish) just for a touch of vintage feel. Inspired by HeatherFeather's coloring, it took forEVER to find that trick!
To make her pop just a bit more, I duplicated the bottom layer and added a vignette to the new copy. Using soft eraser set on 60% opacity, I erased her face and body off of the vignette'd layer (It's easier to make everything below this "invisible" so you can see what you're erasing).
And viola'! Phoebe now looks like she's with the land of the living!!
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Great look at behind the scenes, so to speak!
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First, I used the Custom White Balance tool and took a sample from a shot I took of her holding a gray card. I then copied the WB setting and pasted it to the entire set of pics.
I then moved it into CS4 and did following:
This is the result. The entire process took me about 15 minutes:
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It helps to have a lovely model though :-)
some great info here, I am going to try to figure out the gradient thing....thanks for being so helpful, we really do appreciate it!!
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NIKON D700
Dangit, I knew I shouldn't have let that one slip out of the bag!
I just do it as an adjustment layer. The orange/purple gradient is on the top row of choices, I wanna say it's the second to last one, maybe third to last. Your picture will look insanely freaky until you turn down the opacity, but it's worth it. I haven't played with any of the other colors, I'm liking the purple/orange too much. The higher the opacity, the more of the faded-been-sitting-on-the-window-sill-for-20-years it looks.
I'd love to see what you come up with! Post it pppllllleeeeaaaassssseeeeee.
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[SARCASM FONT] I promise not to use it
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Hi! I'm Wally: website | blog | facebook | IG | scotchNsniff
Nikon addict. D610, Tok 11-16, Sig 24-35, Nik 24-70/70-200vr
And what a result!
Found this thread and know it needs resurrecting!
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Ditto!:D
Neil
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
Great idea!
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
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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.
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:
Finished Shot:
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