People ask me all the time, “How did you get your photos to look like that?”. To tell you the truth, not much. I don’t do a ton of work in Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop on my images. I firmly believe in getting the image as close to how I want it in camera. Editing hundreds and thousands of photos at a time requires lots of time and that’s time I just sometimes don’t have. I need to be able to shoot the photos and run a quick exposure and white balance adjustment on images to then get them online for the client to see. The photos that I present to clients in the proofing gallery are just that – proofs. It’s not until a custom orders a print or album that begin an extensive Lightroom and Photoshop session on those.
I also do a full edit on the images that appear on my blog. It’s usually a selection of my favorites from an engagement session or wedding. That does take some time, but over the years even gotten very efficient at it and I know the look I want for my images and since there very close to how want them out of camera 95% of the time, I churn those out somewhat quickly.
I’ve been wanting the start a weekly post showing some before & after shots and explain how got from beginning to end. This is the first post of the series and it’s from an engagement session I shot last spring for a couple who got married in May 2009. The photo was taken at the Savannah Rapids Park in Augusta, GA. Enjoy.
Here’s the straight out of the camera (SOOC) shot with no adjustments.
First, I started in Adobe Lightroom with a bump exposure. Just a little bump. Nothing too harsh. Then I increased the darkness in the shadows and added some vibrance to make the blues, yellows and greens pop.
Next, I added a vignette to darken the edges bring your attention to the subjects. I also removed some facial spots with the spot tool. After that I exported the image and opened it in Photoshop CS4.
In Photoshop, I use two distinct action sets – The Kubota Imaging Tools by Kevin Kubota and the Totally Rad Actions from Doug Boutwell. I used Oh Snap at 36% (with Defog at 0% and Contrast at 23% inside Oh Snap), Lighten via Screen at 12%, Derelicte at 20% and Warm It Up Kris @ 24%. After those action adjustments I flattened the image and ran my image prep action to resize and apply the border and watermark to the image. The final step is to apply the Kubota Magic Sharp at 25% to sharpen it.
That’s it. Took me about 6 minutes to complete. This was a relatively easy image for before and after. Others are a little more intensive with retouching and smoothing skin, brightening eyes, reducing wrinkles and boosting eye brightness. If you’re interested in the action sets referenced above, check out the two banners below.
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