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.
I was asked to take pictures at a friends beach wedding this past weekend and the lighting was grim....this technique brought out the most of my pictures! Thanks for sharing!!!
Every time I see a thread like this it blows me away how much you can do in photoshop. Now I don't feel as bad knowing that most of what I see is courtesy of post processing. Is it live?......................... or is it photoshop?
Thanks for trying, but all I'm finding there are jpg files (not pdf's) that look like snapshots of a page from the thread. And a very long and skinny jpeg doesn't print real well.
Airpoppoff wrote:
Here you go guys, Pages 1-23 in JPG form, and Also a rar for anyone that wants to download them all at once, As pages increase, I'll screenprint more.
I am not wedding photographer but i shoot these photographs sometimes.
First sample : Only PS ( Duplicate layer> change blend to screen> option(alt)+add layer mask>make default foreground&background colors (D) then choose brush tool> painting on the picture by foreground color> curve&level adjustment>colorbalance>healing brush for cleaning>custom brush for lighting effect and final>USM
1. Used a levels adjustment layer and slid the midtone to the left, to open up some of the shadows. Set the layer blend mode to luminousity so the colours weren't affected.
2. Used a channel mixer layer set to monochrome to convert to BW, then set the layer mode to overlay, so that the underlying image tones were darkened or lightned based on the BW layer. This basically increases contrast in an interesting way. I faded this to 70% and masked out a little bit over the faces so I didn't lose features there.
3. Painted black over the light areas of vegetation at the top of the image - these were distracting from the subjects.
4. Used a curves layer to give a slight bump to global contrast, and add a sepia tone. My sepia curve basically lowers blue channel midtones and adds a very light S curve to R & G channels. I faded this layer to 30%.
5. Duplicated everything to a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E) and set the layer mode to screen to lighten up some shadows. Masked out this layer everywhere except in some shadows. Faded this layer to 70% to keep the shadow detail subtle.
6. Another subtle curves layer with an S curve to increase contrast. Layer mode set to lum. to preserve colours. Masked everywhere except the eyes - this was to add a bit of sparkle.
7. Crop and add a vignette, using a layer set to overlay and filling in black, to draw attention away from the edges.
With the duplicate layer, screen, blur method no matter what photos I use it consistantly blows out highlights to the point of unusable. What can I do to counter this? If I reduce opacity to counter it, I lose the image I was shooting for.
I tried some of the techniques from this entire string on a recent wedding and they turned out great! Thanks to everyone for sharing! Some photos I had thought would be a loss turned out really fantastic and the B&G and families were blown away! Thanks for the tips on the free plug-ins for PS. They were fun to experiment with, and got some cool results!
I love this site!
