I am just so totally blown away by the different pictures posted by the wedding photographers on here.
I do realize though that a lot of the magic of these pictures (in addition to great composition, correct exposure, timing, positioning and other pro skills), comes down to proper postprocessing.
Having done a search and found rather little here on FM for wedding PP (I fear my search skills are to blame) I wondered if some of you folks would be so kind as to post one before (more-or-less untouched original) and after picture, and maybe even share some of the PP steps you went through in order to achieve the result?
Myself I am just a hobbyist who will be shooting a wedding for a friend this coming thursday (yes I know all the issues, and posted about this some months ago on here. Basically he is also a hobbyust photographer and knows what I am good for, and him and the bride-to-be have looked at my online pictures - this post is about postprocessing, not about wether or not I should photograph this particular wedding ).
There was a before and after post where a number of forum members posted before and after post processing pictures. Results on some were stunning. Try and find that thread and you will see what people do.
Dennis
Shawnstar started the thread you mention but I can't find it now.
Molokai
Try a PM to shawn he's a nice guy from Hawaii and ask where the post went as there was loads of great work in it. i meant to save it but didn't
I really like this glow technique, it really improves skin texture. Create a duplicate layer, and then set the blending mode to "screen". Then just add a a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 15 to 25 pixels. Also, you may need to reduce opacity and/or lower exposure, as it can blow highlights.
Chris
I use Hard Light also with the blur. It's always worth playing around with the blending modes at different opacities and use moree than one layer - screen with blur and a hard light with blur. You can create some nice effects.
I guess I missed that other thread too. Would have been nice to see but I couldn't find it when I searched. Well, here is an extreme example. Not really sure how everything managed to go wrong with this photo but with a lot of dodging, desaturating, and a good white fuzzy vignette, it works now.
jimdavies wrote:
Chris
I use Hard Light also with the blur. It's always worth playing around with the blending modes at different opacities and use moree than one layer - screen with blur and a hard light with blur. You can create some nice effects.
Nice PP by the way.
Regards
Jim
Thanks Jim. I have experimented with different blend modes, but for people shots, screen blend seems to produce the best results. Overlay and Hard Light usually produce nice effects for landscapes and products, but seem to contrasty for faces.
I've never tried more than one blend layer. I'll check that out. Thanks again.
Just for anyone interested, it looks like threads on this forum have a very limited lifespan. There's only about 6 pages of threads in total at any one time and it looks like once a thread is unchanged for about a fortnight it is purged.
The thread mentioned earlier (with lot's of examples of post-processing) was only a few weeks ago but will have been purged by now.
ChrisDM wrote:
I really like this glow technique, it really improves skin texture. Create a duplicate layer, and then set the blending mode to "screen". Then just add a a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 15 to 25 pixels. Also, you may need to reduce opacity and/or lower exposure, as it can blow highlights.
Chris,
Thanks for the tip. I tried it in a couple of pics and the result is quite good.
zorro16480 wrote:
This is FANTASTIC! Do you have any more "glowing" tips under your sleeve? I sure would appreciate more examples if you have time.
No prob, zorro. There are lots of variations of the glow technique. I learned them from the book "How to Wow: Photoshop for Photography" by Jack Davis. It works really well for B&W images as well. Here's a B&W example, followed by a color glow example from the same series:
Did you use the same trick on this one also or did you do something different compared to your previous photos?
zorro, these were all done with a gaussian blur layer with blend mode set to screen. However, as jimdavies pointed out earlier in this thread, changing the blend mode of the blur layer creates different effects. Other blend modes that work are overlay, hard light, and soft light (that I know of). You can also stack multiple blur layers for a different effect.
One that also works fine is making two layers one in lighten and one in darken mode. Put a 30-40 gaussian blur on the layers and lover their opacity to arround 30. Merge the blurred layers and put a mask on and paint throug arround eyes, moth an jawline.
ChrisDM wrote:
zorro, these were all done with a gaussian blur layer with blend mode set to screen. However, as jimdavies pointed out earlier in this thread, changing the blend mode of the blur layer creates different effects. Other blend modes that work are overlay, hard light, and soft light (that I know of). You can also stack multiple blur layers for a different effect.
Chris
Great images. I use multiple layers sometimes too. Here's a couple of mine with a blur effect.
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