Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Playing with photography

Here's a confession. I may be addicted to photoshop.

One of my favorite things to do is going over some older pictures and playing with them in post-processing - trying adding sepia, exclusion blue, and gradient layers on the picture to get a moody or somber feel. As with any of my experiments, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Here's what I do:

1) Do all the initial work in camera raw (white balance, exposure, contrast, and whatever else I think it needs)

2) Always working in different layers, I adjust the levels and color curves.

3) I usually start with gradient map layers and add at least two. Then I tweak the style (overlay and soft light are two favorites, but I always try multiples to see what works for me)

4) Depending on what mood I'm looking for I'll add an exclusion blue or sepia layers on top for a soft, older feel.

Here are some examples of what I mean.



For these two pictures of downtown Boston, I added two gradient layers - one BW and one copper - then adjusted their opacity and style. And then I added an exclusion blue layer on top. The only difference between the top and the bottom is that for the top I used BW gradient layer in hard light, and for the bottom I used screen. And just for comparison, here's one without the exclusion blue layer and the original respectively.



And more example, because... like I said... photoshop owns me.



the original


Two gradient maps and exclusion blue layer (she looked a little orange so...)


Different shade of exclusion blue


With an added vignette

"Ma'am, step away from the photoshop, now, before anyone else gets hurt."

3 comments:

  1. Photoshop is fun!

    Yes, but you know - in the north of Sweden when I´m raised, the sun never goes down during the summer. It´s called Midnight sun and busloads of tourists come every year to see that. It´s lovely actually, you get a lot of energy! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. where I´m raised of course, not when. Was in a hurry! :-D

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  3. Wow, your editing enhanced these photos so much-they were cool originally, but with the editing they are awesome!

    ReplyDelete