While waiting on service for the HP Z3100 today I spent time editing a piece for George Molnar, then moved on to one of my own pieces. Why is it I don’t seem to find the time for editing my shots lately? Ah, guess I’m just busy! And that’s a GREAT thing to be!
Not busy printing on glossy still. The service tech popped by, we ran the diagnostics I ran last week, he saw the error message from the carriage assembly and will be calling in about it tomorrow. So, resolution? Not quite yet.
With the printer off line waiting for the service tech’s arrival it did give me time to finally work on a few edits for myself after working on George’s piece. And that was nice to have a little editing time. So, what did I work on today?
Here’s the information on the original image:
- Shot with the 5D Mark II.
- 24-70 mm f/2.8 L series lens. Lens was at 30mm.
- 1/1000th of a second, f/7.1
- Canon 580 EXII camera right about 7 feet away from the subject.
- 2 Canon 430 EX II’s shooting into a Lastolite HiLite Chroma Key Background.
Alright, that’s the gear that was used. Now, about the edits.
In the case of this image I decided to go a little further and do a little more. First, in Lightroom 3 I pushed the fill light up just a little more. The flash that was off to camera right was powered down a little lower than I meant to have it (my fault), but just using some fill light really helped out. From there I took the image into Photoshop CS4.
Once in Photoshop I duplicated the background layer, then used curves to push the contrast ever so slightly. From there, flattened the image and then duplicated a layer again (sound like your standard Photoshop workflow, eh). I popped into the filters menu, selected blur, and then a surface blur. I wanted to really smooth everything out, and yes, create an unreal look. I lowered the opacity of the new blur layer so it wasn’t too over powering. Flatten again, duplicate the layer, and then a High Pass filter blended with the Vivid Light blending mode. Dropped the opacity of that layer, flattened, and finally, made one more new blank layer. On that final layer I painted Cammie’s lips(with the color of the red material), blended with the Soft Light blend mode, and then dropped the opacity of that layer until I was satisfied that it wasn’t too over powering.
So, there’s what went into that edit. Now, you might ask yourself, “What numbers Rich? I mean, lowered opacity to what, set the high pass filter to what?” Well, that’s always to your own taste. I’m not going to recommend this setting or that setting. Bottom line, when you’re pushing an image a lot it’s up to you and it’s all about your taste in getting an image the way you want it. Personally, I had fun working on this one for a little while! 😉