Welcome to the tenth week of Shoot and Edit: Part 2. Click HERE for all the details and upcoming prompts/themes.
This week’s theme or prompt was to show us one “YELLOW” SOOC shot (this was just a suggestion, you can show us any SOOC shot). Hopefully you linked up with Jill’s blog earlier this week.
Each Thursday, I will take my SOOC shot and provide some basic editing tips (I will try to keep it basic and work my way up). You can then try these tips on your own photos and link up here – linky will now be open THROUGH SUNDAY. If you’d prefer, can simply share your own edit and show us what you did to achieve the look. We want this challenge to be a learning experience, so feel free to teach us something new too! Also, it does not matter what editing program you use. Although I tend to work within Adobe CS5 (Photoshop), Photoshop Elements and Adobe Camera Raw…it does not mean that you have to use the exact same program. I hope you’ll be able to take the concepts and apply them in the program you feel most comfortable using.
Each Thursday, I will take my SOOC shot and provide some basic editing tips (I will try to keep it basic and work my way up). You can then try these tips on your own photos and link up here – linky will now be open THROUGH SUNDAY. If you’d prefer, can simply share your own edit and show us what you did to achieve the look. We want this challenge to be a learning experience, so feel free to teach us something new too! Also, it does not matter what editing program you use. Although I tend to work within Adobe CS5 (Photoshop), Photoshop Elements and Adobe Camera Raw…it does not mean that you have to use the exact same program. I hope you’ll be able to take the concepts and apply them in the program you feel most comfortable using.
Once again, here is my SOOC shot:
Building on what we’ve learned in the past nine weeks (Week 1: Edit, Week 2: Edit, Week 3A, Week 3B, Week 4: Edit, Week 5: Edit, Week 6: Edit, Week 7: Edit, Week 8: Edit and Week 9: Edit), I started this edit in Adobe Camera Raw and then ran my photo through my typical clean processing steps in Adobe CS5.
As I said last week, my hope is that at this point in our lessons, you have gotten really comfortable with clean processing in whatever editing program you use (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Picnik, Picassa, etc). As your SOOC shots continue to improve, you’ll need to do less and less processing (unless you enjoy creative editing – I won’t remove that from you because I enjoy editing way too much).
Considering that this week’s I Heart Faces theme was “Sun Flare,” I thought it’d be fun to try our hands at some creative processing by unwrapping one of my favorite actions – Sunkissed by Rita at the Coffeeshop Blog (by clicking on the link, you’ll also see the tutorial she wrote in February 2010 – my steps will closely follow her steps). You may find that your photo is not well suited to this type of processing…and I do not regularly use this type of processing, but for the sake of learning – let’s give it a try!
Let’s start by creating three duplicates of your background image (Ctrl+J three times) – you’ll then want to label them: lens flare (bottom layer), lighten (middle layer) and contrast (top layer). I’m not always the best about labeling my layers but it can often help you remember what steps you applied to a particular layer.
If you start with your top layer (contrast), change the blending mode to Soft Light and lower the opacity to 70% (Rita actually suggested to start with 50% but I decided I wanted more of a bump). On your lighten layer (middle), change the blending mode to Screen and lower the opacity to 50% – or in my case, I lowered it to 38% opacity.
At this point, I wanted to add a bit of haze. In order to do this, you’ll need to click on your LIGHTEN layer and then add a levels adjustment layer (it’ll create a new layer above your lighten layer).
With this layer, I increased my midtones to 1.28 and then pulled my output level up by pulling the arrow to the right (see at the bottom of the screen shot where it says output levels: 40 255?). I did not apply a blending mode to this layer, but I did lower the opacity to 88%.
To warm up the photo, you’ll want to apply a photo filter. Just click on your Contrast layer and add a Photo Filter adjustment layer. I used Rita’s recommendation and applied Warming Filter 81 (although it looks like I used 85 – just a screen shot I produced after the fact) at 25% density (Rita uses 50% density) and I checked “preserve luminosity.”
I left this layer’s opacity at 100% and did not adjust the blending mode. At this point, I encourage you to play with those layers to suit your taste, or you can take it a step further as I did and add a couple of color-fill layers.
I wanted to reinforce the “yellow” theme this week and applied two color-fill layers. You can see my specific color choice below: #fcfbb5.
On the bottom of those two layers, change the opacity to Soft Light and lower the opacity to 6% (these color fills are meant to be very subtle). The top layer should be changed to a Screen blending mode and the opacity will also be 6%. Again, the differences between the previous version that included all of Rita’s steps vs. my final edit are subtle, but for this image, I wanted a softer look.
On any one of these layers, you can use layer masks to erase part of the effect from a face – I personally find it easier to just lower the opacity (at least for this specific type of processing). You’ll also want to be careful to use lens flare in situations that are appropriate…meaning, you don’t want to throw lens flare in on a shot that wouldn’t naturally be taken during sunny hours (aka, night shots or indoor shots not taken by a window).
So, to recap our lesson, today we discussed adding lens flare and haze to your images. For your edit, I would love to see you continuing using the lessons we’ve covered in the past nine weeks as well as apply today’s lesson.
With that said, here’s a final look at my SOOC and Final shot. I hope you found today’s lesson useful. If you have any questions or need more explanation, don’t hesitate to contact me.
I hope you all have a great Thursday and I look forward to seeing your edits!
