To get this post-processing example series kicked off, I wanted to start with an image I took recently. This series of processing shows some simple and quick steps used to give an image a little more pop.

My personal goal for working on images is to not spend a lot of time on images. As you know, when working on client images the more time you spend the less money you are making. The quicker and more efficient you can work the more profitable you will become. I dont watch the clock on my personal work because I enjoy it, but for these tutorials I would like to keep the processing time to 15 minutes or less. This example took about 5, maybe 10 minutes.

The image on the left was the SOOC shot, taken with a Nikon D700 and 50mm shot at f/1.4. Not too shabby on it’s own, and I realize a good bit dull when sitting directly next to the final processed shot.

For the post-processing here, my only goal was to add a little pop to the image and sharpen it up. I do everything that I can within Lightroom and if I can, I stay in Lightroom without moving to Photoshop. Here, I increased the vibrance and clarity and then brought the image into Photoshop. Here is a screenshot of the layers for the image:

The color overlay layers were meant to bring out the fence and nest to better contrast against the green in the background. I sharpened up the image a tad bit using a high pass layer. One little touch was to pull the eggs into a new layer and darken them a notch as well. With the green background, I would have wanted a stronger orange or wood color for the fence. However, that conflicted too much with the nest, which to me needed more of the orange-like color. So I placed a layer of pink/purple on top for the fence, which offered a nice barrier between the green background and the nest in the foreground. The best part about using the solid color overlay is that you can easily open it back up and adjust the color, getting a live preview while you do it.

For a very subtle vignette, I copied all of the layers (copy merged) and pasted this into a layer above all of the others. I set the blending mode to multiply and then masked off the center. I like this method for adding a vignette instead of adding a layer of black because the black is just too harsh. Using multiply takes the existing image and darkens it which, to me, feels more natural than a solid color.

View the larger version on Flickr.

If you have an image you would like to see processed and used here on this blog as an example with a write-up, please email those to jason [at] dubtastic.com. I would prefer to have the hi-res raw files directly out of the camera without any adjustments. If you feel better sending the JPG files send those as well. Just make sure larger files are compressed or sent via YouSendit.