Welcome to Part 2 of our first Shoot and Edit weekly challenge.
Click HERE for all the details and upcoming prompts/themes.
This week’s theme or prompt was to show us one shot SOOC that says “winter” to you (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. 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.
Click HERE for all the details and upcoming prompts/themes.
This week’s theme or prompt was to show us one shot SOOC that says “winter” to you (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. 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:
As I mentioned before, I wanted to start simple….so, I’m starting this edit in Adobe Camera Raw. Regardless of what editing program you’re working in, you should have some of the basic functionality that Adobe Camera Raw offers. Below, I’ve copied my SOOC data and the revisions I made in Adobe Camera Raw. Here’s what I did:
- Created a custom white balance by selecting the white of the snow with the eye dropper. I then tweaked it by eye.
- Bumped up the exposure just a touch.
- Pulled the recovery slider up.
- Dropped my blacks a bit.
- Increased my brightness.
- Increased my contrast.
- Decreased my saturation.
Just making those few adjustments creates a nice clean edit. I’ve included my edit below. If you’re new to editing, I encourage you to try adjusting the exposure, brightness and contrast within your editing program. 
I should warn you that most editing programs offer an “Auto” option. Sometimes selecting auto works perfectly but in this case, it over-exposes the snow and creates unnecessary noise as seen below…thus the reason that I performed a manual edit in Adobe Camera Raw.
The auto edit actually reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my coworkers. He was of the impression that professional photographers have it made. In so many words, he claimed that all photographers require is a camera. He then claimed that very little editing is done because “photographers just have some sort of auto program that they send photos through.” I suppose I could have jumped on my soup box, but I didn’t bother. Had I simply put my photo through an auto edit, it would have been a waste. Anyways, enough of my rambling.
If you’re interested in an advanced edit…keep reading.
Beyond my edit in Adobe Camera Raw, I brought my photo over to Adobe CS5 (also known as Photoshop). Most of my steps can also be performed in Photoshop Elements. Here are my steps:
- Created a duplicate of my background. I applied a high pass filter (found under FILTER at the top of the screen). I then applied a soft light blending mode to the layer. This is my #1 favorite trick to make the details of your image pop. You can lower the opacity if needed and/or use a layer mask to erase part of the effect (I’ll touch on layer masks another week).
- Created a new adjustment layer – LEVELS. I pulled the left side (shadows) of the graph to a 5 – this makes my blacks just a tad bit darker. I normally pull the middle bar (midtones) up to a 1.38 to brighten up an image, but that was not necessary here.
- Created a new adjustment layer – COLOR BALANCE (this adjustment layer is not available in Photoshop Elements, but you can do something very similar by adjusting your Saturation). You can see my adjustments below:
- Created an adjustment layer: BLACK AND WHITE (in Photoshop Elements, you’ll want to use a background copy then go to Enhance>Convert to Black and White). I used an infared preset and then lowered the opacity to 12%.
- Created an adjustment layer: BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST. My brightness went to -1 and contrast increased to +8.
- Finally, I applied Totally Rad’s Lux action at 70%. For a similar effect…you can create a new fill layer – fill it with a shade of cream or light pink, set the blending mode to screen and lower the opacity.
Let’s see the three edits side by side:
Not to overwhelm you, but I always resize and sharpen for the web. I know there are a few freebie actions that do this for you, I prefer to use the unsharp mask. I’ll touch on this another time but sharpening for the web can make a huge difference in how your images appear on your blog.
With that said, link up your edits below. I look forward to seeing what you’ve done. The linky will be up through Saturday. And don’t forget to come back on Monday with your SOOC shots. We’d love to see one SOOC shot that reflects a “good morning.”
With that said, link up your edits below. I look forward to seeing what you’ve done. The linky will be up through Saturday. And don’t forget to come back on Monday with your SOOC shots. We’d love to see one SOOC shot that reflects a “good morning.”
