There are so many different ways to process an image and no one way is the “right” way. While all of our CMpros are extremely talented, they all have a very unique and distinct style. Who wouldn’t love to see the many different plays that they would have on a single image?! We sure do!
CMpro | Picture Plays We Love
This week our SOOC image comes from member Susan/susmjack:
our cmpro edits:
Jenny Miller
LR
Recover dress
lower contrast
Increase blacks
PS
Flip & crop
Sharpen & noiseware
curves layer (pull left corner to the right, center up)
Warm it up (own action)
Ying/Yang action to burn the background
Selective color layer to decrease magenta
Ran Peechy Keen action (lower opacity on layers)
Levels layer(pull blacks to the right, whites to the left)
Portraiture
Lisa Harrison
Opened in Photoshop:
Corrected skintones with curves adjustment layer which helped the overall exposure.
Added contrast by pulling in the shadow slider on a curves adjustment layer.
Ran my black & white action on it (which consists of a soft light layer for pop, an s curve for contrast and a color balance layer for a sepia tone) which was tweaked and selectively masked.
Opened a selective color adjustment layer and went to black and increased it and selectively masked it on his suit to get rid of the lens flare that was on it.
Some burning to the shadow areas and background.
Used the lens blur filter on the background at a low opacity.
Cropped it vertically since there was a lot of clipping which were bright highlights in black & white, resized and sharpened for web with Boutwell’s sharpen for web action.
Lynn/Moments Photography
Adjusted the temperature in ACR and brought into Photoshop
Desaturated her dress with the saturation sponge set to desaturate
Applied a yellow multiply layer
Brightened their skin
Used the burn tool set to ‘shadows’ on their faces
Added a slight vignette
Cloned over a bright spot on the grass
Ran a warm action of mine to finish
Lisa Tichané
I tried to embrace the haze of the original pic to keep a soft atmosphere, so here is what I did:
Recovered some details in the dress
Layers level set to mutiply (to darken the image), masked back at 70% on the subjects
Warmed up the whole image (color balance layer)
Added some tinted haze (warm pink) through a levels layer
Selectively removed some blue in the shadows of the dress (color balance)
Added a bit of contrast on faces (curves layer with mask)
Cloned out the burnt spot on the grass
Added a slight vignette
Megan Cieloha
In LR:
Adjusted white balance (warm and slightly pull tint towards green)
Added contrast
Added exposure
Added blacks
Ran CM Preset: Investigative Reporter- then heavily tweaked in the HSL panel and tone curve
Adjustment brush work:
Burned and desaturated dress
Burned background
Added slight brightness and selective areas of contrast on faces
Adjusted LR standard sharpening
Cropped
Exported with standard LR settings
Jennifer Dell
LR:
Warmed it up a little recovered what a little of the dress.
Bumped midtones
Adjusted WB
PS:
Healing brush on parts of the grass
Desaturated dress with sponge
Bumped skin tones a little
Levels for background to add depth
S curve for contrast
Curve (multiply) at 50% masked off skin
HSL layer adjusted different channels to warm up and remove blues
Gradient map with yellow for the sky area, brushed off everything else
Haze layer (soft pink fill layer) at 12%
Cropped
Sarah Wilkerson
Warmed up the WB
Reduced the exposure
Applied Paparazzi Presets “Investigative Reporter” to deepen and neutralize the tones
Burned the lower and left edges to add depth to the shadows
Selectively deepened the folds in the dress and desaturated the blue in the shadows
Brightened the skin ever so slightly
Softened and brightened the sky where light is coming through the trees (and dodged out
some of the “floating” branches and leaves)
Krista Campbell
Increased contrast with a brightness/contrast layer
Added a soft light layer at 100%
Added a yellow fill layer set to soft light blending mode
Ran a curves layer to increase skin tones and erased that effect from the background with a
layer mask
Added another soft light layer to increase contrast
Ran Nichole Van’s sunflare action
Burned the edges of the photo and some of the background
Sharpened the edges with a high pass filter
Elle Walker
In LR:
Adjusted WB
Decreased exposure
Added fill light
Applied CM Film Art Preset – ‘Citrine’
Added contrast
Decreased clarity -5
Adjusted aqua and blue hue
Adjusted orange and red luminance
Cropped
Thank you so much to our awesome CMpros for taking the time to process these images for us! As you can see that there are an endless amount of ways to process an image. If you like to submit your own image for the pros to choose from for their next edit you can do so on the CMforum in this thread. You can also submit an image in the comments – if your image is selected we will contact you for the large high resolution file. If you want to see more of our amazing CMpros at work be sure to check out the CMpro Daily Project – simply stunning.
That was so fun to look at! I’ve been telling my blog readers for years now about post-processing and how 10 different photogs would process the same image 10 different ways! I love the examples. I think I would’ve edited the image similar to Jenny Miller, but my favorite is Sarah Wilkerson’s, which surprised me. I would’ve never thought about adding such deep contrasts, and I liked how she actually created good lighting!
Great job girls! Fantastic edits :)
I love Sarah W’s play. Lisa’s was a close close second. They are all fabulous and different.
I always love seeing the different edits!
Thank you so much for doing this! It is awesome to see how different amazing photographers edit!
But if you flip the image, then it looks as though he’s wearing his wedding ring on his right hand….?!
lol yeah Catherine I realized that today too…woops!
I love this – wish all my clients could see it and appreciate all the thought and time that goes into the final image! Depending on my mood I love different versions here…Last night I loved the clarity and the tones of Jenny’s…still love Jenny’s – but this morning I adore the dreamy slightly ’70s feel of Lisa’s…so much beautiful choice :)
It’s always amazing to see how different one photo can be. Fun!
Fascinating look into the possibilities of photo editing. I love how Sarah added a whole new dimension to the story by tuning up the white light at the top of the rise in the landscape. It is so clearly the place where the bride and groom, once they turn away from us, are going to walk into their new life together.
Wow guys…. I am so incredibly excited. Bookmarking this. These are the kinds of images I really struggle to edit. Thank you so much!!!