OK, so I am going to cheat a little with this tutorial.  I did not take this photo for the purposes of writing something up about it.  Yet, the more that I think about it, the more it makes sense to use such a photo.  How many times have you put something before a client that you really thought out and they passed right over, yet they rave about something you took in passing?  So this tutorial covers some basic and quick steps you can take to give a quick portrait a little more pop.

The setup for this was pretty simple.  There were two White Lightning X1600 strobes (triggered with Cybersyncs) in softboxes to each side of Dan (Dan is also a gifted photographer). We were actually getting the lighting right for this shoot with Bonnie.  If I had bothered to jot down their power settings then I would have been able to include that here as well.  This was taken with a  Nikon D700 and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 with ISO 200, 1/250th, at f/10.  Again, this was not meant to go in my portfolio, have printed, or hang in a gallery.  It was merely a test shot to make sure the subject was lit and that we had the background gray instead of white.

So being a Photoshop addict, I started to tinker with this one.  Immediately looking at it I can see that the subject is positioned a little off. And there is a small black spot on his hat that is driving me insane because my eye is drawn to it!

The first few steps I take when correcting portraits involves any correcting to the framing/composition and then I move to blemishes.  And for Dan, that would take at least 3 hours (Kidding!).  For those of you who have not yet used Nik Color Efex you might want to go try it out because it is a really nifty add-on.  I especially love their cross-processing options, which I used here to give this portrait a little pop. They have a lot more to offer in their product than merely cross-processing.  I realize that there are plenty of actions and presets to accomplish the same thing.  However, Nik really gives you quite a bit of control and many of their default settings work just the way that I want them to.

To bring out Dan’s eyes, I used the Dodge Tool.  Zooming in to 100% and focusing on the eye area makes this easier.  With the Dodge Tool selected (Range: Midtones; Exposure: 100%) I selected a round soft edged brush that just about covered the eye.  A few clicks and you get a lot more pop to the eyes.  Be careful not to go overboard and create laser eyes.  You want them to stand out but not become the focus.  One tip would be to copy the eyes into a new layer and make your adjustments there.  You can then adjust the opacity of the eye layer to control the strength of the effect.

With that done, I usually move on to any blemishes.  Thankfully, Dan didn’t require a lot of fixin’.  However, I had to get rid of that small black dot on the hat.  Ha! Depending on the amount of work, fixing blemishes is done with a combination of the Healing Brush Tool and Clone Stamp Tool.

If Dan were a woman (wow, does that open the doors to a whole new conversation or what?) I would soften the skin and tones to compliment him, uh her.  But with guys, its OK to be a little rough.  Afterall, Dan drinks Diet Coke by the liter and is a lifetime member of the NRA.  The guy needs to be a little rough in his photos!  This is all personal preference but I like to add a subtle sharpener type effect using the High Pass filter.

Select your current layer of Dan and promote it to a new layer (Command + J or Control + J).  Select the new layer and rename it to “Sharpen”.  From the menu, select Filter > Other > High Pass.  Drop the radius down to 2 pixels.  You should have something similar to this:

Next, set the blending mode to the “Sharpen” layer to “Soft Light”.  You might look at it and wonder what that actually did.  Like I said, with this setting and blending mode, its subtle, but its there.  Turn the layer on and off a few times and you will see what I mean.  If you want a stronger effect, experiment with different radius amounts when running High Pass and also try a few different blending modes.  Just another word of caution, all of your processing should be used to enhance the photo not over power it.  The last thing you want someone to see is only processing and not the subject of the photo.

Not too shabby.  Definitely more interesting that what came out of the camera.  So let’s keep going a bit.  I will often times use vignettes to draw some more attention to the subject as well.  You could fill a new layer with black, masking out everything but the edges, but solid black is rather harsh at times.  Assuming everything you have done thus far is in a single layer, copy that to a new layer (Command + J or Control + J).  Set the new layer’s blending mode to multiply.  Now, add a layer mask and paint in the center of the image, which leaves the darker edges and a more subtle vignette-type effect.

One final step is a little texture effect.  For this photo I used one created by ghostbones which can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/telzey/3114945482/in/set-72157611268347999/.  Simply drop the texture into a new layer and set the blending mode to “Soft Light”.  Since I don’t want a texture on top of the subject I mask it out.  As a side note, if you are using layer masks and want to see what you are painting a little easier, you can press Shift + | (pipe) to get a better view of whats happening.  What that does is allow you to see the mask with a bright red color while you “paint”.  Here is an example:

After I was done masking off the texture, I set the texture layer’s opacity to 65%.  With some trendy black stripes and text, we are done!

View large version on my Flickr page.

Might seem like a long tutorial, but once you get into a workflow, this becomes painless and should only take about 10 minutes max.

Do you have to do any of this stuff?  Absolutely not.  Much, if not all of this processing is personal preference. Some people hate textures, some love them.  I love using them but in this case I tried to include the texture in such a way that would compliment the overall image.  You have to find the look that YOU are trying to achieve and strive for that.