Before and After

Got another before and after for you. This one took less than 4 minutes, and when you're as gorgeous as this senior you really don't need much. I prefer not to sit in CS4 all day and night, so there's not many photoshop tricks going on around here.


She's a little underexposed and pink so here's what I did:

lightroom 3-
upped the exposure slider a little, removed all sharpening (I'd rather do it in photoshop), clicked on calibration profile for this particular lens and exported, open in CS4
photoshop-
use levels dropper and picked the brightest spot on her shorts to set the white point.
new layer- levels again, this time the black dropper on her shirt to set the black point - masked that off the face and skin a little so it wouldn't be too contrasty.
Flattened layers.
Levels helps a HUGE amount. If you get your whites white and blacks black then color casts and other color issues are much easier to deal with IMO. I can't live without my levels adjustment....
Ran TRA pro retouch at 13% on skin
Flatten layers.
Ran Florabella milk and honey action 14%. The gold reflector already gave her a little golden glow, but the yellow tint in that particular action (along with levels adjustment) helped tone down all the pink.
Crop
Sharpen
Took less than 4 mins.
Very basic editing. A little goes a long way!

About that 4 minutes......calculate that times about 800 and then we see why wedding pictures take so long to finish! And there's a lot more to it than that. Renaming files, loading to galleries, culling images, etc.....

We're back from OBX beach portraits

I didn't want to leave the beach but I did want to leave the mosquitoes. Think I'm being dramatic? Check out this article for context. We went through 3 cans of deep woods OFF and I still have 40+ bites on my arms, 34 on one leg, and stopped counting on the other leg. Thought of posting a picture but trust me you don't want to see it. Starting bottle #2 of Benadryl this morning.

Despite the plague of mutant skeeters and the non stop rain the first few days we were there, it was beautiful. Sunrise Saturday totally made up for it. Haven't posted a before and after in a while so here you go....

Shot in RAW, auto white balance, ISO 400, 1/1600 SS, F4, D7000 with 35 1.8. I like to do most of my editing in lightroom but this one didn't need much. Screenshot so you can see I didn't monkey around with the settings. I sat there looking at the screen like...hey that's a cool picture, did I really take that?


Sometimes you just get lucky with beautiful light. And you have a husband who's sweet enough to hold a reflector just outside of the frame. And an amazing person in front of the camera. That's all it took.


Before on the left after on the right. In photoshop- I added a little contrast- 18%. Then a new saturation layer on the clouds- 20%. Then clicked levels and pulled in a little black for more contrast on her reflection in the water. That was at 12% and masked in only on the reflection. And I might go back and leave the reflection alone- haven't decided which way I like better yet. Sharpened. Tada.

So many photos I love from the beach sessions. Families and a Senior, I am one lucky girl!