Tag Archives: filters

Rembrandt

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in photography, postprocessing, studio

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Here is an image from Ella. Her clothing and the lighting here matched to resemble a bit the painting of the old days. It’s a bit of Rembrandt lighting, although perhaps the triangle on her right cheek (left in the image) is a bit too big for that. And the blue spotlight in the back is perhaps a bit much for a 17th century look.

I used a lot of layers for this one, which is bad in a way since I’m always editing in 8 bits, so every layer you add will hurt the resolution of your colors. In the end, noise is always an answer for that to cover up some of the banding you add while trying to compromise the 16 vs 8 bits differences between speed, disk space and accuracy.

There is the usual blemish removal, a bit of eye lightening (though this girl really has very reflective eyes and large pupils). Then some 3D color lookups towards the CandleLight cube to get a more painterly color space. Some lifting of the black colors to get a bit of a washout effect (note that this is oh so delicate, depending on which screen you’re looking). Some noise, and a gentle crackle effect that I used once in the past to mimic old paint.

I love the simplicity, the strongness of her look and the old-fashioned post-processing.

img_6462_colfb

Postprocessing hair

25 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by in photography, tips

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Taking pictures with a camera is only half the job. Postprocessing, making the photo stand out a bit more is an essential part of every photographer. Whether this is in a dark room or in Lightroom, Photoshop or anything else is irrelevant; you have to take care of how you present an image.

One small processing trick I lately found is how to improve hair slightly and realistically.

We start out with the original photo, straight from camera (thanks to Ayten of La Rouge visagie for the styling, and Lisanne for posing).

hair2

Part of my workflow is Totally Rad!’s Pro Retouch action set in Photoshop (and no, this article is not sponsored, it just works quite ok for me). These allow me to do most of my postprocessing non-destructively and relatively fast. One of the actions is called ‘Skin: Foundation strong’, and it makes the skin smoother without destroying texture. I have noticed a long time that it also does wonders for hair, making it look better. Not something you’d expect from a filter that it designed for skin, but that’s where experience comes in.

I’ve applied it below to the hair.

hair3

Notice how it softens contrast, but alas also introduces some blurring. We can rectify that with a simple Unsharp Mask:

hair1

All post-processing is personal of course, but I tend to like this softer look often, and apply it some photos.