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To the right is a screenshot of my Layers pallette in Photoshop. Actually, this still doesn't even show several more layers that I flattened beforehand, and several other minor adjustments that I have made since, but it gives you a general idea of the kind of work that goes into a shot like this. I would guess that I logged about 10 total hours on this one, which is much more than my images usually require.
- As you look through my pallette, working from the bottom, you will see that the first thing I did was use a B&W adjustment layer for some subtle contrast (simply change the blend mode to Soft Light).
- I then used a simple "defog" action that I wrote to add a little bit of midtone contrast.
- I forget what I did in the next layer, but above that you'll see that I made use of a Photoshop plugin called Imagenomics Portraiture to clean up their faces a little bit.
- The barrel distortion layer fixed the "lean" of my buildings so that they stood straight up (check the before & after image again to see the change a little better).
- I later desaturated the image slightly using another B&W adjustment layer, and then dropped in a new sky.
- The sky was too warm to match the lighting in the scene, so I cooled it off with a Photo Filter.
- Next I made use of yet another plugin, called Topaz Adjust. I absolutely love this plugin for adding local contrast and a variety of other effects.
- Some other minor adjustments were made next-- a High Pass layer for some contrast and selective sharpening, and a screen layer with a mask to selectively brighten a couple of the band members' faces.
- Then some dodging and burning for selective contrast
- A Hue/Sat layer to take some of the redness and saturation out out the guitarist's face (I actually took his whole body from a completely different photo (lots of compositing going on for this shot)
- I then had to work on the sky with some blur to remove noise
- Next I ran my defog action again, but masked out everything but the buildings in the background.
- Lastly (but not really, since there were other steps later), I did some more dodging and burning.
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20 comments:
Love how you added the "flash" to camera left on the far left member of the band. It looks perfect!
I would love to know how you added that flash on the left member of the band.
This is fabulous! The transformation is awesome! BTW, the 2nd model from the right, his hand is a bit distracting :D
@Karey & m bright: I actually dropped the guitar player in from a different photo, because for some reason my flash on the camera left side didn't fire for this particular frame. However, once I got him in there, I did quite a bit of dodging the highlights to intensify the effect.
@LIFE_REFACTORED: Another friend of mine pointed out that hand as being somewhat distracting, but I left it in because I didn't really have a better option in any of the other frames. I suppose I could have darkened it down or desaturated it, but let me ask you a question: was it something you noticed right away in the final image, or was it something that emerged during your comparison of the before & after images?
Nice job, this came out great!
Thanks, Tiffany!
Hi Russ,
Great job
I am interested in what brand of light stands and boom do you use the one that supports your beauty dish?
thanx Peter
Hi Peter, and thanks for your question. Both the boom arm and the light stand are from FJ Westcott. Here are the model numbers, in case you'd like to check them out further:
Westcott - 9914 - 13 Foot Air Cusioned Heavy Duty Light Stand (paid about $79)
Westcott WEBA6.5K Complete Boom Arm - 6.5' (paid about $84)
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
What does your Defog action do to add midtone contrast?
Hi siriusbeat, and thanks for your question. My action isn't anything groundbreaking-- in fact, if you do a quick search for "defog" and "Photoshop" you can discover the recipe fairly easily.
Here's what the action does:
1) Merge Visible (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E)
2) Unsharp Mask with Amount: 20, Radius: 60, and Threshold: 0
3) Reduce layer opacity to about 25%
4) Create a black layer mask
At this point I simply paint in the effect with a soft white brush, focusing on specific areas in the image.
Hope that answers your question...please feel free to try it out and let me know what you think.
Very cool! Thanks for the information. I tried it out just now and it's definitely something I could see using.
Good deal. Yeah, I actually use this defog method in a pretty high percentage of my shots-- usually as one of the first few steps in my workflow. It provides instantaneous "punch" to my images and helps them leap off the page.
Glad this helped you...thanks again for your question, and definitely feel free to ask more questions and/or leave comments in the future. The more, the better! :-)
Sorry about the late response. Actually the tattoo hit me right on . Its probably not a big deal, but, another thing that I notice now are the well lit ears all over. Is it intentional?
Hi there, LIFE_REFACTORED....yeah, I'm definitely going to be addressing that tattooed arm before I submit this as a final image, so thanks for bringing it up. As far as the ears, I'm not sure that I'm seeing any issues there. Do you mean that they're so well-lit that you find them distracting? I didn't do any special retouching on them.
Hey, you have a brilliant picture there and its probably just (the weirdo) me who looking at the ears .
If you wish to, You could probably give it a shot by making their ears less brighter than their faces to see if it makes it look any better. I'm sure you know better :)
And a final thing :) sorry! :) the lead model's eyes are in the shadows and you have tried to bring it out. Would you have redone the shot if you had a chance? How would you have fixed it given that your alien bees were all from the frontal area? Would you have brought one of them strobes closer or something?
I suppose that one could find the ears to be a little bit distracting, but then again there are probably several things in this image that if you really focused on them exclusively, you'd start to find them a bit distracting. I think it's kind of like an oil painting...if you get too close where you can see the individual brush strokes, they look unnatural and out of place. But then when you step back and look at the whole, everything just sort of falls into place and comes together nicely. Does that make sense?
Please understand that I'm not trying to devalue your input in the slightest-- I truly appreciate you taking the time to comment. It's just that at some point you have to accept that there will be different things that will stick out to different people, so you kinda just have to go with your gut instinct.
Regarding your other point, yes, I would love the opportunity to go back in time and reshoot this to get some more light into the lead singer's eyes. I had this same exact problem resurface in some of the other from this shoot, and it's just a matter of him having very deep-set eyes. I didn't notice the problem at the time, because I had a million other things going through my head, as far exposure, composition, posing, etc. So I just plain missed it. But I've filed it away into my "lessons learned", and you can be sure that I'll be on top of it the next time I find myself in a similar situation. :-)
Correction on my previous post....I actually *did* recognize the issue with his eyes about midway through the shoot, because I had an opportunity to review the images on my laptop before the second portion of the shoot began.
The way I corrected it was to have him lift his chin upward just a little bit. Nothing too technical! ;-)
Your point regarding the ears is absolutely true.. and the analogy you have presented here is apt and hey, do not bother explaining that you are not devaluing my input. I'm the student here and am learning from you. So, I'm totally ready to be corrected and contested. I'm grateful for all the knowledge you are sharing .
Deep set eyes - Chin up! quite simple eh! and I was thinking how to work the lights! d-uh!
Waiting for the next in the series!
ok ok i give in to photoshop now. Wow that is great
Thanks Steve....I'm not necessarily into Photoshopping things just for the sake of doing it, but sometimes a situation clearly calls for it. Like when a band tells you they want something that resembles a movie poster. :-)
The whole "Twilight" look is really in vogue these days, so I'm just going with the flow, so to speak. Anyway, thanks a bunch for your comment!
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