Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Pomegranate, before and after

I thought it'd be cool to show some of my process for editing pictures, at the very least, a before and after comparison. You can find the full size finished image over on deviantArt, go favorite it or something! Here ya go!


Before

After


Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
Focal length: 75mm
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 1600
Lighting: speedlight off to my left, ~8 meters @1/64, cloudy ambient "skylight" above.

So as you can see, I darkened the background a lot! I really wanted the subject to stand out from the background, and the initial image was quite flat. I used a darkening curves adjustment layer once with an "Apply Image" mask ( which also adds in some nice contrast ), and another one with a vignette mask.

If you look close, I also took out a ton of details on the floor and the wall, just to keep it a little smoother and cleaner. Just boring old spot healing there!

As far as the figure itself, I left it primarily untouched except for dodging and burning. I added a little bit of depth to the dress, and some extra lights and shadows in her hair.

And last, a curves adjustment layer to play with the blue channel, blue in shadows, and a tiny -tiny- bit of yellow in the highlights. I actually had to mess around with that one quite a bit after I checked it on my other monitor! Evidently my secondary monitor is far warmer than my primary~

A bit of a self-critique on this picture, I'd say that I messed up the lighting a fair bit. It was an overcast day, and it's the first time I've really worked with a speedlight outdoors! Her face needs some extra light from a slightly different direction, perhaps a stronger flash, or a second flash with a "snoot". I also could have benefited from a smaller aperture, at full resolution, this picture was very much not sharp.

Either way, I'm darned happy with this picture, and hopefully you like it to!