Hissyfits Photography Blog

Hi friends! Don’t ya love how I call ya’ll friends even though I have never met the vast majority of you? But that doesn’t matter…if you follow along and check back in every few days to see what I have to say, then by all accounts, you are a friend!

So I thought I would switch things up on this little blog of mine and share some deep, dark photography secrets! Or maybe just the steps I go through in editing an image! Nothing all that secretive really! And definitely not the only way or the right way by any stretch of the imagination…just my way! Although I am pretty set in my workflow, I always love to see the steps other photographers go through in post processing and thought I’d do a little before and after of my own!

So here she is…Gentry girl in all her foofy glory straight out of the camera. A cute shot, yes, but it needs some work!

So the first thing I do in my workflow is to fix the exposure. I lighten 99% of my images. This can be done in several different ways. Some use a curves layer; some add a duplicate layer and then change the setting from “Normal” to “Screen” {adjusting the opacity} in the layers box; some use actions. And there may be other methods out there I don’t even know about! Anyhow, I have done all three of the ones I listed. All three require layer masking {I’m not prepared to give a lesson on that one so Google it!} so it really just depends on personal preference. I have an action I love {from none other than Sheye Rosemeyer} and I use that when I lighten an image.

For this one, I adjusted the opacity on each level and then painted back in the very white sky so I could get whatever detail might be there and also on Gentry’s face. Because her hair is so “white” as she calls it, I almost always have to paint it back in or I lose the detail.

My next step was to add a pop of color! Using the same action set mentioned above, I ran “Zap” on this. I adjusted the opacity on each of the layers until it had the look I was wanting. The color can also be adjusted in Photoshop using the the Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation sliders. I have also used those methods, but am all about making things as easy as possible and when I have an action I love that works the way I want it to, I am more than okay with just pushing “Play” and letting the action work its magic!

Once I have the exposure corrected and the color “popped” I am ready to start editing the photo to achieve the feel I want it to have. No secret here, I love the retro look, so that is precisely what I did to this one! I first ran “Mini Makeover” {same set of actions from Sheye} over the image and adjusted all of the sliders to get the feel I wanted. Side note: I often mask back in bits and pieces of the image where I want more or less of the effect.

I also added a duplicate layer {Layer: Duplicate Layer} and ran my Neat Image noiseware over the image. I have read and researched and everyone seems to have a different opinion on where is the best place to do your noise reduction, so I just throw mine in somewhere in the middle! I have the free version of Neat Image and it seems to work pretty well! I then add a vector mask and go back over the eyes so as not to lose detail there.

At this point I ran “Buttersnap” over the image followed by “Zap” at a super low {5%} opacity. You may not even be able to tell I did much…less IS more!!

At this point I played with the image just a little more in Photoshop. I ran “Circa 1963 with Grain” over it as well as “Clarify.” I then added a touch of haze with “Hazey.” All were at low opacity and changed the look only slightly. Something I have noticed is that when I run anything that clarifies as part of an action, I mask back over the cheeks. The clarifying seems to add a sharpness to skin that I don’t like! It is all personal preference and this is just what I have found works for me!

At this point I am happy with my image! It has the feel I want it to have and I am ready to sharpen, crop and blog it! The first thing I did was to create a duplicate layer and then run one of my sharpening actions over it. {Sorry…not sure where it is from!}  I adjusted the opacity and then painted back over her hair and anywhere else I didn’t want to be obviously sharp.

For my blog, I crop to 5 x 5 or 4 x 6. I wanted this one to be 4 x 6 so I cropped, rounded the corners and then added in an ever so slight edge burn {Sheye’s actions once again}. I added my watermark and here she is…

Her eyes look a little funky to me…but just ignore that! I probably didn’t pick the best picture to use for this, but once I decided that, I had already spent forever going through many of the steps!!

As I mentioned earlier, there are countless methods to achieve the look you want in Photoshop. This is just mine and what works for me! If you found something helpful, YAY, and if not, well, that’s okay too!

Hope you are all having a FAB day out there in the blog world!

Filed under my-lil-lollies, random-sweetness, by Bethany