Hello all,
I have an editing request from a recent bride, she wants certain shots to have a "FLAT" look.
This couple was a pleasure to work with and have already paid me and all, but they want to order
another album and would like to have these "FLAT" looking images in the extra album.
Now my style isnt to produce "FLAT" looking images but the thought of turning down $2k for an extra album just didn't seem right to me and I accepted and she paid.
BIG MISTAKE....
So now after hours of trying to acchieve this FLAT look on these images, I just cant seem to get it right. I do all my editing on LR3 but I also have CS4 and am fairly familiar with most of its functions, I just hate touching it.
Any advice on how to achieve this look Help please.
Sample of the look I'm trying to achieve below:
This image is from studiocastillero.com
This image is from studiocastillero.com
Yeah
first you have to exposure your shot for this type of thing.
then you drop the exposure more in LR
then add a fair amount of fill light
and then play with the black and contrast etc. to achieve the look you want.
Some like sergio, pat furey, matt allen, etc. can do it better than others and I am sure will never share the secret to the sauce. What I am giving you is a simple no brainer starting point. I am not going to say it works 100% of the time but it does some times.
What you want is a super low contrast image that pops like old film shots. Tough to do.
Good luck
Also post a pic and let us play with it.
The most important thing you can do to start the process is mute the highlights. In LR3, when you see the tone curve box on the right, click on the little box on the bottom right that lets you adjust the tone curve points.
Put a point at the top right of the curve and put another one in the middle of the 3rd grid box from the right and one down from the top. Now adjust the first point you made so that it is bending from the second point down to just below the first grid line you encounter.
After you've got this accomplished, all of your highlights will be greatly muted and you will have an easier time adding and subtracting fill light/exposure/contrast to get the flat look you are going for.
With that said, it also helps greatly if you had shot intending to edit your photos this way, but good luck with the album design.
you just have to have the right exposure. I mean the right exposure is always a "range"...
I tend to err on the side of overexposure. Some people like to underexposure etc.
You have to develop an editing style and shooting style that works for you. Doing something like this is hard because you do not normally shoot that way.
Firstly are you sure it's a flat look and not just matte paper they want? If they really want flat then use the linear curve and reduce the clarity and exposure. Then push up the fill light a bit.
In LR3, just take the bottom left corner of your curve and bring it up (keep it at far left). This "crushes" the blacks. No need for fill light. Add some split tonight, and boom, you're done.
In another thread, I think amonline described a process using photoshop that may help you.
Image>Adjustments>Exposure and play with the offset, gamma and exposure. You may then need to add a bit of grain/noise.
It seems to work much better with darker or shady images...I tried it with an image that was taken in the bright sunlight and it just didn't look right at all.
Ha - that would NEVER have occured to me to try doing anything related to a Selective Color function. Actually works pretty well... result from tweaking black level of individual colors is interesting as well.
I can't remember but I think Sergio shoots JPG, which gives less leeway in shadows and highlights and has less gradations in the tone curve overall. This probably influences the method of achieving certain effects.
I tried Sergio's tip... I like the result better than the curve I'd normally use. I also added a bit of grain (in PS... not how I would do it but just to get an idea) and a slight warming filter.
FWIW to do the selective color thing I just added a Selective color adjustment layer with blacks -6 then added and invert color adjustment layer and another selective color adjustment layer with black at -6 (to do the same to the highlight) followed by another invert adjustment layer. Benefit here being that I can slip anohter photo undert that layer stack and get the same result.
This monitor is very contrasty so I suspect I may not notice the flatness as much as it's really there.
anyway... doubled the flattening layers and here's even mo flat:
My point for posting this is kind of also to attempt to disprove the idea that you have to "shoot" for it. Sure... clearly there are going to be situations that will be more or less conductive to it looking cool... but given a specific situation that you're shooting PJ-style with no additional lighting... I seriously doubt that there's going to be a vast chasm between the exposure settings selected by someone who wants to get that "look" and someone who is not looking to get it, especially if shooting raw. That's not to say that there may not be exposure choices that result in a better outcome... but in terms of what the client will notice vs. not... I think it can be done competently.
now that I look at the images I like the flat and even the more flat much better than my original delivered image (at least on this monitor... based on the histogram I think the more flat should look like crap... but again this monitor is weird so maybe it's adding some contrast back in)
Ok So I tried Sergio's advice and this is what I got:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Thanks Sergio, I think I will stick with this method for the rest of the edits. I just have to work on other little details but I think this was a great tip.
Help please.
