Welcome to the 39th 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 “Orange” 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 a simple/basic or advanced Photoshop/Photoshop Elements or Lightroom tutorial. You can then try my tutorial on your own photos and link up here – linky will now open EARLY on Thursdays and 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, Adobe Camera Raw and now Lightroom…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.
Much like I said last week, we’re getting to a point in our good to WOW journey in which you guys are creating beautiful SOOC shots. Most of you have found a style that works for you, so it’s not like you “need” me to teach you anything in particular. I thought that I would use this week to review clean processing and some of my favorite editing tricks.
Rather than make you do a lot of scrolling to see the final result, just mouse over my SOOC shots below:
Rather than make you do a lot of scrolling to see the final result, just mouse over my SOOC shots below:
By the way, if you missed our lesson on the “mouse-over” technique, click HERE. Too lazy to click? Here’s the code you’re looking for:
If you’ll remember last week’s lesson, we discussed batch processing (in Lightroom)…specifically the syncing function – that came in handy this week. I started working on the 50mm image first. Here’s what I did:
- Custom white balance adjustment – used the tip of the candy corn.
- Increased blacks +20
- Increased brightness +50
- Increased contrast +48
- Increased clarity +15
- Increased vibrance +15
- Increased saturation +6
- Under HSL/Color/B&W – increased saturation on red and orange +14
Of course, I also used Caroline’s fine sharp and standard noise reduction presets at the end of my process…but one step I left out above is one of my favorite new tricks in Lightroom. So…many of you have commented on some of my “storybook edits,” and asked me to share my process. In the process of a nap yesterday afternoon (I’ve had quite a week), I decided that I should pull together all my steps into a preset. But…there is one particular set of presets that got me started that I thought would be worth sharing:Sarah (Naptime Momtog) actually shared this process on her blog yesterday (click here). What I’ve noticed about this effect is that it is adjusting three elements: fill light, recovery and sharpening (+50). Much like the high pass filter trick I regularly use in Photoshop, if you want to create a more 3D look to your images, increase your fill light and recovery to the same level (ex. on the above images, I increased both to 14. This concept will work in both Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.With that said, I know I didn’t really teach anything new…but I hope today’s review has helped. Do check out that HDR processing preset – it’s one of my favorites. For your edit, I would love to see you continuing using the lessons we’ve covered in the past 38 weeks as well as apply today’s lesson or share something you’ve learned recently. I hope you all have a great Thursday and I look forward to seeing your edits. Next week’s theme is “Leaves” Have a great Thursday!
