So I’ve got kind of a special treat today (if you would call it that). I’ve been spending a lot of January and February working on some behind the scenes & business stuff, with no weddings and sessions at a minimum. I just really need to prepare for what’s happening starting March, where I will pretty much be hitting the ground running until the end of the year. So anyway, with all that said, I didn’t have any new sessions to use for a before & after Recipe Mondays post. And then I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to go back to some of my very first weddings and see how I would have edited them if I had my Totally Rad Actions? So that’s what I did. From my archives, I pulled out the very first wedding I had ever shot on my own in October 2005. I was miserably sick at 4 months pregnant with my second, and I also shot in Portland, Oregon, raining all day of course, and charged around $900 for the job. It was for a sister of my friend’s husbands, in case you were wondering. And a VERY sweet family at that
Back then I was shooting in “Auto” mode with my trusty Nikon D70 and some kit lens. With VERY little knowledge of Photoshop, I edited & touched up most of these images with Photoshop’s “diffuse glow”. I didn’t know what else to do. Actions didn’t really exist back then. I thought I’d show you an original photo from the wedding, the way I edited back then, and how I would have edited it now -almost 5 years later.
The first image below is the original untouched image. The second one was edited with what looks like Photoshop’s “diffused glow” effect.
The original untouched image.
I lightened up the faces and some of the trees and slightly darkened his suit using TRA’s “Yin/Yang” tool.
“Green with Envy” on the trees and gray/green stone.
“Boutwell Magic Glasses” at 50 percent.
“Select-o-Pop” on the stonework.
I used the noise reduction (skin) tool from Nik Software’s “Dfine 2.0 on their skin.
I rotated the image to straighten it, cropped and used the healing brush to rid of any distractions.
“Warm it up, Kris!” at 60% opacity.
“Antique Tone” at 70%.
And there you have it!
What do you guys think?
by Caroline
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