Last month I went out with a few local photographers to get a few images to use in a post processing workshop I put on the next day for a group of about a half dozen photographers. The workshop went very well and everyone learned a lot. During the workshop I went over a lot of techniques that I use while post processing but didn’t do any of them fully due to time. After the workshop I finished up the image and posted it on Flickr.
I won’t get in to the actual nitty gritty here about how to do the post processing, but I’ll show you the basic steps as I went through so you can appreciate the work that can go into an image to make it achieve a specific vision. If you know a bit about photoshop maybe you’ll pick up a few tips from the quick explanations I give here.
Here is the image after being brought in to LR and having basic white balance and exposure adjustments. Nothing more than a few sliders are applied at this point.
It’s a good image, but it can be better. No matter how much I like an image straight out of the camera I know I can make it even better with processing. At times that can be a negative because it makes it hard for me to just accept an image how it is without any extra processing.
The next step is using the adjustment brush in Lightroom to adjust exposure, saturation, clarity, sharpness, etc. I like to do as much as possible in Lightroom before moving on to Photoshop because working with the RAW file gives you a lot more detail. I like to define and color the hair and eyes especially. I also like using burning and dodging to add dimension. Adding saturation to specific areas can also help pop an image.
Once I’m finished in Lightroom I right click the image and select Edit in Photoshop. I do this because from Photoshop, if I just Control+S I can save it and that PSD file will automatically be included in Lightroom. That way, when I export I can have Lightroom 3 add a watermark to the bottom of the image for upload to the web. It also takes care of saving the JPG’s in the sRGB Color Space so I don’t have to worry about forgetting and leaving it in ProPhoto which web browser’s can’t read correctly which gives you very desaturated looking images on the web.
My next step is always clean up. I’ll start with a cloning brush on lighten and/or darken and adjust areas of the photos while working on a new layer as necessary. This works great for correcting shadows you don’t want and for removing wrinkles. Finishing up with the healing brush can really make things look nice. Chris Orwig has a great portrait retouching series on Lynda.com that covers this in depth.
I don’t like using actions for cleaning skin because it makes things look too fake and/or blurry. Although, I do like using Mama Shan’s Powder Action for evening skin tone. But, I apply it very lightly. Just enough and I always adjust the cream and cocoa layers that it creates to taste depending on the subject’s skin tone.
After initial clean up I’ll do a trick I learned from Chris Orwig’s videos. I’ll stamp the image to a new layer (Control+Alt+Shift+E) and I’ll add an Unsharp Mask. But, rather than using traditional settings I’ll use a low amount, usually around 7, and a very high radius around 220px and a threshold of 0. Again, I adjust this specifically for each image based on the look I want. This adds local contrast and really gives an image dimension.
After the USM, I’ll use a technique I learned from Don Giannatti to add contrast. I’ll stamp the image again, change it to a blending mode of Soft Light, set the opacity to around 9% and apply a Gaussion Blur at 8.4px. This really makes the image pop! I’ll use a layer mask as necessary if I think certain areas of the image got too dark.
The next step is luminance masks. I’ll create channels for several levels of Darks, Mids, and Highlights. This allows me to have a mask for the image based on luminance values so I can add curves to specific luminance values specifically. You can read more about luminance masks at Luminous Landscape.
BEFORE
AFTER
Once I get to this point I’m pretty close to being done. To finish up I’ll apply a curve to the eyes and hair individually while adding color through the curve settings depending on the original hair and eye color. I’m just looking to pop it out a little bit more. For the hair, I’ll add a layer mask and brush in highlights where I want them rather than allowing all of the hair to get the additional curve. For the eyes, I apply it to the iris only.
If I feel that I took too much texture out of the skin, I’ll go back to a layer with some skin texture. I normally do this right after the skin clean up and powder. I’ll duplicate the layer. Change it to a blend mode of Overlay. Desaturate it. Then run the High Pass filter at around 2px or so. I want just enough texture in the skin without over doing it. Next I’ll drop the opacity to where I think it looks good and I’ll add a layer mask so that the texture only applies to the skin. If I already have a layer mask for my powder I’ll just alt+drag that mask onto the texture layer.
Finally, I’ll add a new layer at 50% gray. Set it to soft light. And use the burn/dodge tool to adjust the brights and darks of the image. I’ll normally use this to add even more dimension to the image and to slightly slim certain parts of the body with shading. It also works well to bring out highlights and enhance shadows. I really like using this technique on folds and ruffles of clothing to really bring them out. It works great on the face to add a hint of light, on the lips for some depth and above the eyes to make them pop out a bit more.
There is so much you can do with post processing. Knowing all of the tools and how to use them is the first step. The next is knowing where you want your image to go and identifying all of the areas you’ll need to correct in order to get there. I have a recipe I follow as I process but I sometimes deviate from it on certain images depending on how I feel about where the image is going and where I think it should end up.
OVERALL BEFORE
OVERALL AFTER
This is the second image from this outing that I’ve processed. This image didn’t need much clean up at all. When you’re so wide you don’t pick up skin variations so you don’t have to clean up nearly as carefully. I focused on saturation, clarity, sharpening and dimensioning.
BEFORE
AFTER
This level of processing isn’t appreciated by everyone. But, when you are visiting with someone in person you rarely have time to pick out all of their imperfections and dwell on them so often times your brain just blurs everything together and you don’t notice all the little imperfections. Once you take a photograph you freeze the person in time. All of those imperfections start staring back at you. Retouching helps to make the image look the way it did to you at the time, and not how the camera actually captured it. Retouching also helps you to reduce and simply which helps narrow the viewer’s focus.