This is a portrait from a photographer's site in iowa who's technique I find very beautiful, edgy and creative. Does anyone know how to get this look? I see this everywhere but if you are starting with a picture that isn't really lit this way, is there a way to use curves and whatnot in photoshop to get this look?
I would need to see what you are starting with, but I would say that for the most part you probably could tweak a photo to get this sort of effect. I know that I like to mess with contrast, levels and saturation to get that sort of image.
I'd try using Curves to get the contrast, noise-reduction to smooth the skin, some dodging to lighten the eyes, and a lot of sharpening. Try using a high-radius contrast-enhancing Unsharp Mask filter, with settings along the lines of 15%/60 diameter/Threshold = 0
Follow that up with your "regular" USM treatment to sharpen the detail on the hair.
Thanks for posting the original Dan. Here is my shot at it. Basically I used a couple curves and levels to darken the background and masked out the effects on the model. I used a few curves to get the tones of the skin and selective color adjustments to get the skin color close. I dodged and burned the skin to try and match it up. Mostly in the midtones. To get the skin smooth I duplicated the background layer and applied gaussian blur at seven pixels. Masked out the effet on the eyes hair and mouth and background. then faded the effect back to around 12%. Sharpened using Luko USM, the settings are this.
Filter/Unsharpmask/18/40/0
Filter/Unsharpmask/150/0.3/0
Edit/FadeUnsharpmask/100%/Darken
Filter/Unsharpmask/150/0.3/0
Edit/FadeUnsharpmask/50%/Lighten
This phot of mine has a really similar editing techniques and in the photo the link has really detailed editing notes if your interested. :)
I'm still learning things myself and what I really suck at is keeping track of what I do in editing. I just play around and find what I think looks good and undo if I don't like it so I can't exactly tell you what I did but, here's my shot at it. I used the lighting effects filter, adjusted curves, spot sharpened at 50% on the eyes and hair then spot blurred on the skin, saved and here it is.
OK how does mine look? I won't tell you how many times I merged layers. I have to say this thread is the ultimate when the studio gives us the original too sweet, How did I do?
Quite frankly I wasn't going for a match the original edited version I felt was a little too blown out on the highlights. I went for more tone in the face and skin.
OK how does mine look? I won't tell you how many times I merged layers. I have to say this thread is the ultimate when the studio gives us the original too sweet, How did I do?
Quite frankly I wasn't going for a match the original edited version I felt was a little too blown out on the highlights. I went for more tone in the face and skin.
Wow Dan has a great site and very cool style.
You're supposed to merge layers? I just save it as a jpeg.
What I did with this one was add a vignette (you can use RAW software, or one of many Photoshop actions in existence), adjust contrast with an S-curve in curves, unsharp mask two different times with two different settings (amount:20 radius:50 threshold:0; amount:200 radius:0.3 threshold:0), then adjusted saturation. I selectively dodged and saturated the eyes a little as well.
I basically did the same as above here, but I applied a little gaussian blur to the skin and and muted the colors while adding even more contrast by using a free "bleach bypass" filter by Red Paw Media. I also burned a little more in the upper left corner to accentuate the vignette there.
The way I do it is go to the Layer menu, then select Duplicate Layer. I then apply Gaussian blur to the entire layer. Then I add a layer mask to the new duplicate layer by clicking the icon that looks like a rectangle with a circle in the middle located on the layer palette (usually on the right side of the screen with little thumbnail images that represent each layer). Once you have done that you can use a paint bucket tool to color the entire mask black, which makes that blurred layer invisible. Now use a soft, white brush to paint over the skin.
