Welcome to the 14th week of Shoot and Edit: Part 2. Click HERE for all the details and upcoming prompts/themes (also including previous editing tutorials).
This week’s theme or prompt was to show us one “Faith” 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.
Once again, here is my SOOC shot:
Overall, I had a pretty nicely exposed image. However, for consistency purposes and building on what we’ve learned in the past 13 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, Week 9: Edit, Week 10: Edit, Week 11: Edit, Week 12: Edit and Week 13: Edit) I started this edit in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR):
The ACR adjustments are very minor, but you’ll probably notice that the image is just a tad bit warmer than the SOOC shot. From this point, I wanted to straighten the horizon before making any other improvements.
This first video is for my Photoshop Elements users:
This next video is for my Photoshop Users. I especially like the trick at the end that makes cropping super easy!
To be completely honest with you…I’ve been using the ruler approach to straightening for a while, but this video definitely provided a much quicker method for cropping the photo to size. I used the video tutorial on my image for the results below.
From this point, I ran Nice & Easy. I did make some modifications to my layers – here’s what I did:
- High Pass Layer – lowered opacity to 50%
- Created new layer and moved above High Pass Layer – ran noiseware.
- Levels Layer – 26, 1.38, 246 – used layer mask to partially remove from water and sand.
- Brightness/Contrast Layer – I really wanted to add a little more depth to my clouds so I pulled the brightness down to -25 and the contrast up to +45. This is the quickest and easiest way to adjust clouds (in my opinion).
- No adjustment to hue/saturation layer.
- No adjustment to warm filter layer.
- Pink fill layer – increased opacity to 22%.
I also thought this photo was really appropriate for text. I was going to include a video tutorial on adding text, but they all seemed a little hokey (and I haven’t yet figured out how to make my own video tutorials). However, I would like to share one of my favorite font sources: Kevin and Amanda! If you don’t know how to apply text, have a look around…and feel free to do a YouTube search for video tutorials.
I personally decided to go with scripture.
So, to recap our lesson, we learned how to straighten a horizon and apply text to images. For your edit, I would love to see you continuing using the lessons we’ve covered in the past 13 weeks. I also encourage you to give this lesson a try.
With that said, here’s a final look at my SOOC and Final image. 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!
By the way, I am leaving tomorrow morning for a Bachelorette Weekend. If I don’t visit your edits today, I will visit on Sunday.
