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%.

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.

A lot of the photos and tutorials, and to some extent the resources, have a serious tone to them.  Last night I decided to have a bit of fun and what better way than to create a project which enables you to laugh at yourself? Creative self-portraits are fun, but can be a little tricky.  Resources are important, however, a plan is even more critical to your success.

First, here are the items I used:

• Nikon D80
• Sigma 18-200mm
• SB800 Speedlight
• Tripod
• Two different outfits
• Giggling daughter (optional)

The first piece is to have a plan.  Think of a theme.  Think about how the image will come across.  You do that anyway (or you should) when you take pictures any other time, so this should be no different.  In fact, here is where it is more important because you are telling a story with the images you are creating.

I was initially inspired by fellow creative Kriegs who setup a self-portrait shot in a pool setting.  The photo portrayed him sitting on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water.  He brought in another photo of him as if he was about to push himself into the water.  I thought it was a really neat shot and thought that I could try something similar.  But I have no pool and if I did, I wouldn’t want to just duplicate what he did.  Being limited in what I could actually do at the time I wanted to do it, I thought about something in the living room.  I wanted to portray two sides of my personality, one serious and one playful.  So that would need two different sets of clothes.  The idea came to me about sitting down trying to read but being bothered by my own practical joke side.

With an idea in place, it was time to put it into action.

Since I was setting up in the living room, I setup the tripod where I wanted.  I took a few quick test shots to make sure the settings were what I wanted.  Then it was time to put on outfit #1 (serious mode).

I will be the second to admit that I am still learning when it comes to taking my D80 off auto and moving into more manual settings (the first person is my friend Dave).  Would you be surprised to know that up until last night, I did not know how to set the timer on the camera, or if I would even be able to do that.  So let’s start with that first.

A quick plug to The Complete Guide to the Nikon D80, who offers an extremely wonderful resource on the D80 camera.  For those who want a manual for their camera, I would start there.

On the top of the camera, you will need to locate the frame advance button.  Press it until you see the timer indicator.

The camera will also allow you to change the timing of the shots, but I found that 10 seconds was enough for me.  I pressed the button to fire off a shot, which triggered the timer, and then ran around to the couch to try and look somewhat serious.

The next shot, with outfit #2 (not-so-serious mode), took a few tries to get correct.  Obviously I am standing over the other me and looking down, so I wanted to make sure that everything was as seamless as possible.  For example, I tried this with another position in the living room, and the me that was standing up was not directly looking at the me sitting down.  So it took some planning and going back and forth to and from the camera to check the image.  The standing shot needed my eyes looking down at the me sitting.  I also needed to have the brown bag close enough to the other me so that it would make sense what I was doing.  I actually had to take this shot about 9 times to get the position and lighting correct.  When I was done, I had the following two images:

Since I used a tripod when taking the shots, merging the two images in Photoshop is relatively easy.  I opted to use the first image as the base image and the second one was imported into the first.  I then took the photo of me standing and trimmed away the background.  There were some slight lighting differences in the two so I used a combination of levels & brightness/contrast adjustments to match them up the best that I could.  The merged image was as follows:

Notice that I also did some slight cropping and resizing.  In the photo of me sitting down, you can see that I am wearing the same black Nike shorts as I am standing up.  So I cropped that out and sized the photo up just a tad so you can’t see them.

We all know that I seem to be unable to stay completely away from Photoshop and knowing that, you can understand why I kept going with the post-processing of the image.  I made a copy of the entire image and then pasted that into a new layer in a new group.  This way I have the original merged layers (if I want them) and can continue to edit with a new group using a copy of the merged photo as a base.

I copied the merged photo into a new layer and converted it to black and white using “Desaturate” (Control + Shift + U).  I changed the blending mode to multiply.  I also brought out the colors of the brown paper bag and my watch to help punch up some of the colors.  I also made a copy of the black and white layer (with blending mode again set to multiply) and applied a Gaussian Blur to it.  After that, I trimmed away me from the image so that only the background was left.

The next step involved applying some subtle textures to the image from Ghostbones and Paul Grand.  The last step was to add one final adjustment layer for curves to help accentuate the final image.

Feel free to drop a comment here or on the actual Flickr page.