Here is another post-processing series which shows some quick and simple steps you can take to tweak a photo and not spend a ton of time on it.  I believe I spent about 10 – 15 minutes processing this photo.

Here is the original shot (Nikon D700, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8, ISO200, f/2.8, 1/1250s):

This was taken during a local Independence Day parade and the lady was sitting on a moving float.  I took several shots as the float moved passed me and managed to get a few of her looking directly at me.  This one was one of my favorites.

I wanted a bit tighter crop on the shot and also did not like the direction in which the flag was blowing, making it look backwards.  This was quickly done by flipping the image horizontally and correcting the crop, bringing it in a little more.  Wanting a bit more vintage look to the shot, I dropped the opacity down a notch as well.

Next, I ran the Vintage Film Photoshop action (download for free here).  To draw the eye in a little more, I wanted a subtle vignette.  Rather than add a harsh layer of black, I duplicated the layer and then set the blending mode of the new layer to Multiply.  I added a layer mask and trimmed out everything except the edges, giving a little more natural vignette effect.

For the texture effects here, I used some of Jessica Drossin’s textures, which are truly superb textures.  I first used the “Worn” texture pack 1.  I placed this texture layer directly under the group that the Vintage Film action created.  I changed the blending mode of this layer to “Soft Light” and then slightly masked out the lady.

I then placed another one of Jessica Drossin’s textures directly under the “Worn” texture.  For this texture, I used “Destitute” from her Texture Pack 2.  I set the mode to soft light and I was done!

• Larger version on Flickr
• Previous post-processing series articles

As part of this post-processing series, readers are encouraged to send in their files for me to work with and write something up on after processing it.  This was one of the first images sent to me and I really had a tough time with it.  After looking at it, I really did not want to do anything at all with it.

The main reason I did not want to touch the image was that I really thought it was great already.  The natural light in the background is great and their colors are wonderful.  Being a portrait, the photographer clearly understood that as the focus here is more about the eyes and the face.

So what would I do?  If this were a client of mine they would certainly get this image with just a few minor adjustments (just to give it a little more punch).  But the more I thought about it, what really could I do to work this image when it was already good to begin with?  It was really tough to decide what direction to go in. What I would normally do, if I liked the shot enough, would be to give the client the shot as it was.  I would also work on an additional shot which had the post-processing in it.  So that is where this explanation comes into play.

As with 99% of what I shoot, this was first imported into Lightroom.  The photographer was kind enough to send over a raw file to work with so I was able to treat the photo just as I would any other.

Here is what you need:

• Adobe Lightroom & Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Lightroom presets by Sarah J (Autumn Presets) {Free}
• Ghostbones “Gray Matter” texture {Free}
• Shadowhouse texture set {Free}
• My skin softening Photoshop action {Free}

Here is the original image:

From the data in the file, I see that the image was taken with a Nikon D50 with the following settings: f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO-400, and at 50mm.

After importing the photo into Lightroom, I bumped the clarity and saturation of the photo with the sliders in the Develop tab.  Then, I applied the Retro Warm preset from Sarah J.  I love this preset with this image because it really goes well with her skin.  The warm tones are soothing to me for some reason.

Next, I brought the image into Photoshop for some additional processing.  The first step was to soften the skin just a notch.  Run my Photoshop skin softening action which should give you a bit softer look:

Since the portrait is all about the eyes, the next step was to bring the eyes out just a little bit more.  Here is where you have to be a little careful.  Too much emphasis pulls the eyes out too much and rather than it appear normal, they look artificial.  You want people to notice the eyes but they cannot be too strong or it just comes across overworked.

Using the Rectangular Marque Tool (M), I copy the eyes and bring them into a new layer (Command+ J or Control + J).  I then run the Unsharp Mask filter on the new eye layer with the following settings:

If you find that the results are too strong, lower the Amount from 84% down to 50% and/or lower the radius to 1.0 pixels.  You can always lower the opacity of the eye layer to reduce the effect as well.

Next, to balance out the sky a bit, I wanted to bring back in some of the colors that were in the original image, namely the purple.  So I created a color fill layer with a layer mask (I used a color hex value of #290a59).  Using the Linear Gradient Tool (G) (Foreground color set to black and background color set to white) I placed a gradient to mask out the purple over the subject yet leave some in over the sky.

If you want to see the layer mask and your image at the same time, simply hit Shift + | (pipe). I then changed the blending mode to “Soft Light” and dropped the opacity down to 80%.  Here is what I ended up with:

Since I absolutely love working with textures, I thought something placed in this image might make for a cool effect and also help punch the overall warm tones up even more.  First, I started with this texture by Shadowhouse Creations:

I added this texture on top of all of the other layers and set the blending mode to “Overlay” and dropped the opacity down to 80%.  Keep in mind this is still about the subject, so not wanting to leave a texture over the subject, I masked it out.  I created a layer mask on this new texture layer.  With a soft-edged paint brush and black as my foreground color, I painted on the areas I wanted to mask off, leaving the texture to appear more in the background.

Next, I used this texture:

As with the previous step, I changed the blending mode to “Overlay”, dropped the opacity down to 80%, and masked out the subject.  Here is the image so far:

I think that this is a pretty good stopping point, actually.  To enhance the effect of the sunset, I did add a little lens flare.  Yea, I said lens flare.  Poor lens flare.  What used to be a cool filter was so quickly abused and overused by Photoshop users worldwide.  Should you want to take that risk, create a new layer above the “Color Fill” layer and under the two texture layers.  Fill this layer with black and drop in your lens flare.  To have it blend a little better with the overall image, I changed the blending mode to “Screen” and lowered the opacity down to 80%.

As I have found with a lot of the images I post that contain any type of explanation, many ask for detailed step by step instructions.  So with this post-processing series I will be doing my best to include the play by play on how I achieved the final effect. This image, used with permission, was taken of a local Special Response Team (SRT) and I processed it to give it a more dramatic effect.  This tutorial is a bit lengthy so hang in there.

First, there is nothing wrong with the original photo by any means.  As you know from my site here, I really enjoy post-processing.  So why not share some of the steps?  This tutorial will cover taking the original photo and applying a more saturated and hardened look, with a subtle tilt-shift type effect.

Also, this was not a photo that I took.  Used with permission, it was taken by the local Sheriff’s Office and I simply processed it.  According to the information in the photo, it was shot with a Nikon D1x and the settings were:  f/7.1, 1/500, with an ISO of 160.  Also, I am using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial.  I would imagine that you could follow along with CS2 and up if needed.  I try to use some of the more traditional tools and steps that do not require a specific version, however, that is sometimes unavoidable.

Resources needed:

• A “cool” cloud photo.  The one I have used was purchased many, many years ago with an active subscription to Photos.com.  No real specific cloud photo is required.  It is just best to find one more interesting than the original photo as we are going to be dropping that in.
• Vintage Film Photoshop action (Download here)

Here is the original photo I started with:

As you can see, not too bad at all.  The photographer had a tough time getting everyone in the shot, keeping it level, and fighting some harsh light.  Without bringing external lighting into the picture, I think he did a pretty good job.  These kind of shots are tough but thankfully Photoshop is around to help fix certain things you cannot correct in camera.

The first thing I do is properly align the image with the horizon, making it straight.  Lightroom makes this super simple, but if you are in Photoshop and want to do it, I would recommend using guides.  View the rulers (Command + R or Control + R) and then using the Move Tool (V), click and hold inside of the ruler to drag out a guide.  Start at the top or bottom ruler and drag the guide toward the middle of the image.

Then, you can scale and transform the image up or down a bit in addition to rotating it so that it is aligned the way that you want it.  At this point, I am not too concerned with effects.  I am more concerned getting the base image setup the way that I want.  I do not want to get too far into the image and then realize I need to take something out or correct it as it could potentially be in several layers.  Better to fix what you can now rather than later.

With that said, after fixing the horizon line and positioning the image in the frame where I wanted it, I then got rid of a few things, such as the powerlines and patrol vehicle.  To do this, I used both the Clone Stamp Tool (S) and Healing Brush Tool (J).  I have found that too much work with the Clone Stamp Tool (or work done too quickly) leaves an undesirable pattern behind.  It is good to change your sample points and also follow up with the Healing Brush to make the image look as natural as possible.  Granted, the areas that you are removing are in the background and not the main focal point, but if this were printed at a decent size some of the blemishes might become noticeable.

Now that stuff is out of the way, I wanted to drop in some better clouds.  There are plenty of stock photo resource sites out there to grab some clouds from.  I have slowly built up a resource repository of my own that I can go back to without having to access any website.  It doesn’t hurt to get out and shoot some stuff of your own, which really frees up any licensing or managed rights issues.  I dropped in a photo of the sky, which I think looks much better, and then set the blending mode to the sky layer to Multiply.  That is a pretty strong result, so dropping the opacity down about half helped.

The next step is to trim away the bottom of the new sky so that it blends more naturally with the rest of the photo.  Rather than erase away the image, apply a layer mask.  In the layer mask, and using a soft-edged paint brush, paint black in the areas you wish to hide.  Tip: Shift + | will allow you to see the image and the mask (the mask will be shown in red) which is a great way to see what is going on while you mask off the sky.

Masking trees is tough and even harder to get it exactly right.  The main goal here is to try to remove as much of the halo effect you might be seeing and to have the sky blend more naturally with the new image.  Experimenting with levels, brightness/contrast, and color balance on this new layer can also help out considerably.

Now I have the new sky added in, but it appears to be top-heavy now.

Since the goal is to make this a little moody, rather than lighten the sky to balance the image it was better to darken the ground.  This step is basically the same as was done with the sky.  Using the Marquee Tool (M), I selected the bottom portion of the image and copied it into a new layer (Command + J or Control + J).  Then the blending mode of this new layer was set to Multiply.  As with the sky layer, I needed to lower the opacity down to just over half (in this case I used 65%) to get the ground consistent with the rest of the image.  I then applied a layer mask to this layer and masked out the people and truck from the ground.

Next I wanted to add a vignette.  I really do not care for solid black vignettes.  They feel so unnatural and dropped in.  I go for a slightly different route.  Select the entire image (Command + A or Control + A) and then paste into a new layer.  Set this new layers blending mode to Multiply.  Add a layer mask to this layer and with a soft-edged brush, paint black in the center of the image.  What this does is leave a slightly darker edge around the image giving a little better vignette effect that is not as harsh as using solid black. Here is the result:

Next, I wanted to sharpen up the image even further.  Paste again what you copied (this should already be stored in memory) into a new layer.  Desaturate the layer (Command + Shift + U or Control + Shift + U).  Next, select Filter > Other > High Pass.  I used a radius of 20 pixels.  The greater the radius, the greater the final effect.

After running the High Pass filter, change the blending mode to Overlay. Here are the current layers and the image thus far:

Next is probably the easiest part in the tutorial.  In the initial portion of the tutorial I mentioned needing the Vintage Film Photoshop action.  Simply select the action and click play.  CS3 and CS4 users should see the action create a new group and then place all of the new adjustment layers inside of this group.  The group will be named Vintage Film – by Fallout75.  Here is the result:

To draw more attention to those in the photo, I wanted to apply a subtle tilt-shift type effect to the image.  On a quick side note here, I am really OCD about naming and organizing within a PSD.  I keep everything named and organized as best as possible.  So I have a group that contains the processed photo and then another group which contains the tilt-shift effect.  When I first thought about the tilt-shift, I was not sure if I would like it or not.  By placing it in a new group I could quickly turn it off and on to compare against where I was previously. What I did was create a new group and then paste a copy of the merged layers into this group as a base.  I then built the tilt-shift layers on top of the new base layer inside of the new group.

On the new base layer, I created a copy.  Some tilt-shift tutorials have you use the gradient mask and do all of your editing on a single layer.  I am not a big fan of this because I prefer to be able to make simple adjustments.  I also do not want to step back through history to make the changes.

With the new layer selected, press “Q” on your keyboard to enter Quick Mask Mode. Next, select the Gradient Tool and select “Reflected Gradient”.  Make sure your foreground color is black and background color is white.

From the center of the image, drag the cursor up (or down) toward the edge of the image.  This will create a bright red gradient mask.  The area in red will be the area unaffected by the blur, so make sure that this area is what you want to keep in focus. When you are done, press “Q” again to exit Quick Mask.  You will be left with the marching ants which have selected the area that you will apply a blur to.

Next, select Filter > Blur > Lens Blur and use the following settings:

When the filter is done add a layer mask.  As mentioned before, the other tutorials I have read usually have you apply the Lens Blur filter directly to the layer rather than to a layer above it.  As you have found out by now, the gradient is not always exact so getting it where you want takes some trial and error.  By getting it as close as you can to exact and having it in a new layer gives you the ability to mask out certain areas and also change the strength of the blur by adjusting the opacity, etc.  In the mask, and using a soft-edged brush, paint black into any areas you do not want touched by the blur.  For this image, I had the blur on areas of the people that I did not want.  So I was able to quickly mask that out without detracting too much from the overall effect.

Depending on how far you want to carry the effect, you may opt to increase the saturation.  To do this, open the Hue/Saturation dialog (Command + U or Control + U) and adjust the Saturation slider to the right (I would say +15 or +20). I found that this brought out the color a bit more in the uniforms and gave them a little more punch.

Next, I wanted to darken the rest of the image just a notch.  I copied the entire image merged (Command + Shift + C or Control + Shift + C) and then pasted it above the other layers.  I set the blending mode to Darken and lowered the opacity down about half (To be exact I used 57%).  With another layer mask, I masked out the center, which allowed the rest of the image to remain darker but let the punch of the uniforms comes through.

Here is the final look at the layers and image:

By request, I added some additional effects to the image, which you can see here:

Since it took me a little while to get the lightning in (and I am still not 100% satisfied with it) I wont even attempt to explain how it was done.  I am sure there are better ways than what I did, but sometimes you gotta go with what you know!

Enjoy.

You hear it time and time again from photographer after photographer: get it right in the camera.  Many times, Photoshop and post-processing is viewed negatively, almost as if your inability to get the shot 100% perfect right off the bat means you are a horrible photographer.  Well, what happens when there is no way possible to get the shot exactly the way that you want it in camera?

This was a shot done for some printed collateral and it was done in an environment which provided several challenges to taking the shot.  To begin, there was no product table, cyc wall, or white paper available.  No strobes were available, only constant lighting used for video.  Also, there was limited space with several items that had to be photographed.  You can easily find yourself in a position like this and have a few options.  If you are lucky enough to find a shot you can use on a stock photo site it would save you a lot of headache.  The trouble with specialty shots is that despite catalogs as deep as iStockPhoto, you can still come up short when searching for what you really need.  The other option is to set it up as best as possible and work some post-processing magic.

I really wish I had taken a picture of the actual setup.  Explaining it really doesn’t do the “DIY” nature of this any justice at all.  A small round table was pushed up against a wall, and two large semi-reflective foam boards were set on top.  Without a cyc wall or product table, I wanted to create that effect but had nothing to really pull that off with.  I found an easel pad in the storage closet and taped several sheets on the wall, draping them down onto the foam board making a really, really rough cyc wall.  I brought two of the continuous lights over to blow the white out.  Thankfully these lights had barndoors on them which made it a little easier to place the light where I wanted.  A third light was handheld and boomed over the center, shot into a large softbox.

The results were….well…not impressive.  Did I mention I was shooting with a different camera?  I had a Canon 20D when I am used to shooting with a Nikon D700.  The 20D is not a bad camera, but when you are used to your own menu options, buttons, and features swapping to another camera and trying to shoot something quickly can get interesting. Not to mention an LCD half the size! So yes, there are times when you have to have an image but have little to no equipment that fits that type of shoot, making it almost impossible to get the image where you wanted it the first time out of the gate.

Anyway, on with the images.

So those are the two best shots (Taken at f/5, 1/40, ISO 200).  Yeah.  The best.  What was I thinking, right?  You can get an idea from those two shots how small of a space I was working with.

I knew shooting this that I would be working in Photoshop more than shooting.  So I was only focused on the products and making sure I had enough white space around them to work with.  I knew seems and other small blemishes would have to be corrected. I was not as worried about the softbox dipping into the photo a bit, or the black space under the foam board.  I could correct all of that later, along with the colors, blown out areas, and other needed fixes. Oh, did I mention that given the use of this image, I had to also remove any prominent brand names?

After some work in Photoshop, here are the same two images:

Recording a step by step for something like this would be difficult at best.  My goal first was to clean the image from anything but the products.  Then I made some other adjustments using levels, curves, and color balance.  The back part of the radio handle was blown out so that needed to be recreated, which I did using the other handle and copying it.  With that out of the way, I used the Dodge Tool to clean up the area around the product making sure it was pure white.  From there, it was a matter of removing any of the branding that needed to go, such as the first aid kit, emergency radio, water bottles, and snack bars. I did a screen capture showing the entire process from start to finish.  I sped up the recording in the essence of time, but the processing time for each image took just under 20 minutes.  The entire shoot, from setup, tear down, and processing took about 1 hour.

A quick little note about the video.  I tried using some new software (free software) on my PC rather than the usual setup I was running on my Mac.  The quality here suffered greatly in my opinion.  Partly because of the software but partly due to the conversion into the video editor.

Am I the best? Of course I am.  That is why you are reading this instead of writing your own blog post.  Seriously, though.  Not at all.  I am sure there are more efficient ways of doing what I did with the equipment I had on hand.  All I did was try to improve the product while getting rid of the crappy background.  Not rocket science.  In fact, if anyone has an suggestions, I am all ears.  I think I can live with the final result though.

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.

So this article has two purposes. The first was for me to test a new screen recorder application that I have been wanting to use. I am working on some Photoshop screencasts and figured this might be a great testing ground.  The second purpose was to offer a little insight into some post-processing that goes into some of my work.

The image I used was one that I did not take.  A special thanks to Monroe Harbour Marina in Sanford, Florida for permission to use the photo.  I was born in Florida and have family in Sanford, so this is a frequented spot.  If you look in the original photo, down toward the bottom left area on the bulkhead was where I took my own Marina Nightfall image .

Back to the topic at hand. Here is what I started with:

Is this a bad image?  Certainly not.  Could I have taken better?  Who is to say, really?  The point here is not to critique the photo or label it as bad by any stretch of the imagination.  The thought process here is to take an existing photo and build upon it.  Many times I take a shot and like it in-camera.  But my desire to tinker and improve in Photoshop carries the image further. What I tried to focus on with the image was making the colors pop a little more and sharpen it up.  I also threw in a little tilt-shift effect.  Here is the video (I sped this up to make it look like I really knew what I was doing):

In total, I spent about 15 minutes on the image.  This is a little longer than average as I normally know what I want to do with the image before starting to process it.  Having a direction in mind will save you a lot of time in the long run.

Here is the final image:

If you would like to see a larger view, check out my Flickr page.

Photo Credit:
Monroe Harbour Marina
Sanford, Florida
(407) 322-2910

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.

After reading through Maciek Lesniak’s Flickr stream I found it to be overflowing with helpful diagrams and setup shots.  You see, if you are a photo geek like myself, you enjoy the setup shot almost as much as the shot itself.  It is great seeing what someone came up with, how they positioned their equipment, and what settings they used to produce the final image. In several setup shots I saw a DIY beauty dish for Nikon Speedlights and became intrigued, which led to a trip to the store, and obviously to this post.

Let me preface this with a few things first.  I realize this is not my idea and that I am not breaking new ground here.  I know that there are commercially available kits available.  But sometimes these little projects are really fun to work on.  Second, use this as a guideline.  You will see in a few steps below just how much I screwed up.  Your results could come out looking much better.  But rather than clean them up and start over, I figured I would offer a real world example. Lastly, I am not a DIY guy by nature.  Normally, I would rather just buy the stuff.  But this seemed interesting so I thought I would give it a try.  It took me a few days, mainly because I would leave the dish to dry and forget about it or get busy.  Despite reading claims from other photographers that the project took them 30 minutes or an hour, it might take longer than that for you considering the paint has to dry.

The general guide I followed was the one written by Tom at Light and Pixels.  I made only two stops when picking up supplies and that was at Wal-Mart and Lowes.  I opted to get a Tupperware bowl rather than something different mainly because I did not want to go through the hassle of mounting an L-bracket and purchasing the extra hardware.  My thought was that if the dish were not too heavy, a strap would support mounting it to the Speedlight.

Here is what I bought:

I bought a few cans (few too many) of spray paint.  I had initially thought about using yellow to make the dish look a little Alien Beeish but opted not to go that route by the time I was through.  You can get away with buying 1 can of white and 1 can of black.  Depending on the bowl, a can of primer couldn’t hurt. I also got the gutter downspout connector, wall kick plate, mirror, velcro straps, bolts, and sealer.  I believe the total price was somewhere around $30.

The first task was to drill holes into the kick plate for the mounting screws and then attach the mirror to the underside of the kick plate.

For the connection to the Speedlight, I cut two small slots on each side of the gutter downspout connector.  I used the Velcro cable straps on each side which let me place the Speedlight in and strap it in place.

Now here is where you don’t want to follow me step by step, per se.  I decided to paint the bowl interior and then cut/attach the gutter downspout connector.  Hindsight being 20/20, I should have cut everything, attached the downspout connecter, then painted.

Also, I had the bright idea to use a razor to cut out the plastic.  Even without putting a lot of pressure on the bowl base, it was still too much causing it to crack.  Which also caused the paint to chip.  Which also caused me to want to throw something in the garage. But hey, sometimes you just have to screw up and learn a lesson.

Thankfully the bowl did not crack too terribly bad.  I was not ready to go out and buy something different, let’s put it that way.  Still frustrated, and with the gentle touch of the morning dew against a baby deer’s nose, I drilled three holes into the base to allow for the kick plate and mirror to be mounted inside of the bowl.

So next, I painted the black exterior and also tried to patch up some of the cracked plastic with the sealant I had purchased.

I have set this up so that the mirror/mount obviously stays in place, but I am still able to adjust the height off the bowl interior if needed.
With everything in place, here is the result:

And here are a couple of shots taken of me using the dish:

I wish I had bought a bigger bowl, painted the outside with another round of black (which I still plan on doing), and wished I had painted it a little better (more precise) than what I did.  But, it is what it is now.  I took some test shots but was not pleased with how they came out, mainly because they were rushed.  I need to take the time to do a proper setup with the right amount of space to see if this was really worth the hassle.

If you don’t like what I have written up, here are some other DIY beauty dish examples you can read up on. All of them seem to have had a much more fluid time at creating this thing than I did!

• Isaac Lane Koval
• Jon C. Haverstick
• Light & Pixels
• Knick Knack
• VOX
• Digital Grin Forum
• David Tejada

For you Nikon shooters out there that have not yet had the opportunity to experiment with the Creative Lighting System (CLS), you are missing out.  While at first it takes some adjustments, it is really quite fun.  And while not the solution for every shoot, it certainly has it’s place within the photographer’s toolbox.

First, this is a result of boredom and curiosity.  I have to admit I have seen similar shots on Flickr which served as the inspiration behind this experiment.  I searched and searched but did not bookmark the exact shot that I used as a rough foundation, so please forgive me. I took a setup shot, and while it is relatively accurate, I did some minor adjustments before the final shot.  But overall, this is what it looked like:

On the kitchen island, I placed several tall glasses as the backdrop.  I figured that these, when hit with the Speedlight, would provide some nice bokeh curtain behind the figurine.  Since I left all of my light stands at the studio, I drug a stool and some boxes over to one side of the glasses.  I pointed the SB-800 toward the glasses.  Next, I setup the SB-900 on a tripod, shot through the umbrella to give a little softer light coming from above.  Everything was triggered with CLS (SB-900: +3.0; SB-800: +1.0; Built-In: Off).  On a tripod, I setup the D80 & 50mm.  The camera settings were ƒ/1.4, ISO 200, and shutter at 1/50.

Here is the result (including xpro treatment using Nik Color):

Next time I might try this with some gels.

The above image is one that I took of my daughter. [The technical aspects of the photo are as follows: Nikon D80; Sigma 18-200; Focal Length: 18mm; No Flash; F/7.1; ISO 100; and Exposure 1/200 sec.].  Personally, I love the photo.  Naturally, it is of my daughter so that is the top reason.  Second, it just conveys fun and makes me smile.  However, there are a few things that one can do to improve the photo without spending too much time in Photoshop.

The first step for me was to remove some of the tennis shoe marks from the slide.  I cleaned up the image using the healing brush tool.  A minor tweak to the levels gives a cleaner and brighter image.

The next thing I want to do is give the image a bit more depth by blurring the image.  Duplicate the image layer into a new layer and from the menu, select Filter > Blur > Lens Blur and with a minimal amount.  This blurring method appears to have a more natural effect than other blurring methods such as Gaussian blur.  Next, add a layer mask and using a soft round brush, paint over the areas you want to remove.  For this image, I wanted to keep my daughter in focus, obvious, but I also wanted some of the main slide to her left and to her right as well.  The background behind her should have a subtle blur as follows:

Again, nothing too drastic but I feel this adds quite a bit to the image in terms of depth.

Now I want her to stand out a bit more, so I used the lasso tool to select her and promote that selection into a new layer (Control + J).  I made some minor adjustments (you can use Brightness & Contrast or Levels) to brighten the image up so it stands out even more.  Don’t get too crazy with this because you want it to stand out but not contrast too much with the lighting of the image.

The final step is to bring out the eyes a bit more.  Again with the lasso tool, I made a selection of the eyes and promoted that into a new layer.  Change the blending mode to Screen and drop the opacity down so it is not overpowering (I have the opacity set to 41%).

So while I did not touch up the image that much, the minor adjustments that I made give the image just a little more punch than what was there before.