Portait - SOOC and Edit

[SusanH1970]

ETA: Errr, that should say "Portrait", not "Portait". Not enough caffeine yet this morning and my fingers aren't awake yet.

Just thought I'd show the difference between a SOOC and an edit.

I was working with beautiful light (all natural light, backlit with only a white reflector for fill). Exif is: 50mm, f/2.2, 1/1600, ISO 100. I usually shoot with a CWB in-camera, but forgot to this time and had it on auto WB. As you can see, the SOOC is very cool, but focus and exposure are good.

I shot in RAW (always!!!) and in ACR I fixed the white balance with the temperature slider. In CS2, I used the patch tool to lighten the dark circles under her eyes and cloned out the stray hair over her head. I duplicated the layer and set it to multiply and reduced the opacity to about 40, then masked her back in. Again I duplicated the layer, set it to soft light at about 35, and again masked her back in. I ran the image through Imagenomic's Portraiture at a threshold of about 4 and lowered the opacity of that layer to about 10. Then I burned the background a bit at 10% (shadows, midtones and highlights) and cropped. I also resized and slightly sharpened. The complete edit took less than three minutes.

Hope this helps someone. Thanks for looking.

[OsmosisStudios]

What do you mean by "masked her in" to your different layers?

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

What do you mean by "masked her in" to your different layers?

When I created the layers, I clicked on the layer mask icon and used a soft black brush to erase what those layers did to her skin, eyes, hair, etc. That way, the effects from the layers (richer colors, more contrast, etc.) don't mess with her skin tones. She's still natural looking, rather than being an oompa-loompa.

[zona5101]

Excellent edit and very nice of you to share your technique!
I shall steal it and call it my own!!

[BigFuzzy]

Nice to see what's behind the curtain, thanks for sharing Susan. It's a great shot.. love the feeling of warmth and it's even better knowing what coolness you started with.

So, what does the Imagenomic Portrait plugin actually do? Or is that the secret ingredient.

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by zona5101

Excellent edit and very nice of you to share your technique!
I shall steal it and call it my own!!

LOL Bruce!

Originally Posted by BigFuzzy

Nice to see what's behind the curtain, thanks for sharing Susan. It's a great shot.. love the feeling of warmth and it's even better knowing what coolness you started with.

So, what does the Imagenomic Portrait plugin actually do? Or is that the secret ingredient.

Thanks, Al! Here's info on Portraiture. I LOVE it. Portraiture - Retouching Plugin for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Apple Aperture

Good work! Much improvement over a RAW image

[kuul13]

So technical.. Didn't get much of it, may be once I make my hands dirty then I understand. But, the post image is awesome. Looks so natural, if you have posted this in SYS it would be difficult to tell if it was edited (at least to me)

[Indigo November]

Thanks Susan! I'll definitely be using this.

[Jim Poor]

Nice. But less than three minutes to do that mask?