Monday, February 22, 2010

What a Difference.....

....a click (or two) makes!  I generally edit my images from scratch, or else use actions that I created to speed up my workflow.  I do however, love to experiment with actions created by others and to create artistic images that I would not be able to achieve on my own (unless I had lots and lots of spare time - ha!)

I chose this image of the adorable Miss "L" to use because (1) she's just so darn cute and (2) I love to see her little face over and over again and (3) her mama will be so proud ;-)  So once again, we'll start with the SOOC image.  It was shot intentionally underexposed because I did not want to blow out the whites [f2.0, 1/800, ISO 100]
The following image is the first edit and my usual steps were taken to achieve this look:

1)  Defog image
2)  Adjust Highlight to bring out details hidden in shadows
3)  Curves layer to brighten and add contrast as well as color pop
4)  Adjust hues to get rid of the blue/cool cast in the image
5)  Touch up her face and eyes just a teeny tiny bit.... her face is perfect and I didn't have to do much
6)  Resize and sharpen for web
From there, I ran the Marmalade Silver Luminosity action which gave me a completely different look with just a click of a button.  I like the richness of this image.
I went back to the first edited version and then this time ran TRA's Lux action (click, click) which resulted in a soft, vintage look.
For the final version, I used CoffeeShop's Honey Retro action and I love it, although I would normally want to spend a few more minutes to mask it a little on the face.  Speaking of CoffeeShop, what a fantastic resource it is!  Rita, the woman behind CoffeeShop blogs about photography, editing, life as a SAHM and her site is full of actions, tips, templates, etc. and best of all, it's 100% FREE!  Go check out Rita's site here.  You might want to grab something to drink and plan to stay a while.... I'm not kidding, there's a ton of good stuff.
As you can see, it's easy (and fun) to achieve literally dozens and dozens of different looks with a mere click (or two) of a button.  Leave a comment and let me know which version you like the best.  Until next time.... thanks for stopping by!

10 comments:

  1. Gorgeous! WOW, she is so stinkin cute! I think I'd have to say I like the Lux version best. Although the last one is pretty cute too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. great edits! love the TRA Lux image! and she's adorable!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fun tutorial...I keep going back and forth between the marmalade and the lux...both are great-TFS!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a cute shot, thanks for sharing your processing steps!

    ReplyDelete
  5. LOVE the end result! That last shot is awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  6. LOVE IT. I mean LOVE it. Thank you so much for sharing.
    When you say defog what do you mean by that? Again thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. When you shoot with a digital camera and especially in RAW format (instead of jpg), your images tend to look hazy or foggy as though there's a coat of film over it. Defogging is my first step in my workflow and it helps to get rid of the foggy appearance. Check out this helpful link which walks you through the steps of defogging http://www.ehow.com/how_4995244_defog-picture-photoshop.html. Good luck and let me know if this helped!!

    ReplyDelete