I chose this image, because it was a tougher image to correct, but I desperately wanted to keep it. I LOVED the way Rebekah photographed. There is a renaissance aura about her and this simple portrait of her shows just that. I also love how the ending image has almost a film-like color quality as well. Enjoy this second installment of Before & After! Would love to hear what you think below!

The Original (Pre-Lightroom):

In Lightroom 3, I corrected Temperature, Tint, Exposure & Fill light using the settings below:

In Photoshop CS4, go to the “Layer” menu, select “New Adjustment Layer”, then select “Color Balance” and use the settings below:

Flatten the image. Now select the eyes using the lasso tool and feathered at 50px. Go to the “Image” menu, select “adjustments”, then select “color balance”. As shown in the following two images, change the settings for the midtones and highlights, then click “OK”. This makes the whites of the eyes less yellow and more true to life colors.

Now use the healing brush tool and clone stamp tool to remove any imperfections:

Using Totally Rad Actions, apply “Boutwell Magic Glasses” at 50% opacity.

Now apply “Warm It Up, Kris!” at 30% opacity.

Apply “Slice Like a Ninja” at 50%.

Lastly, we just want to slightly brush “Select-O-Pop” on the blues of the eyes to pop them out just a little bit.

That’s it! Check out this before & after below and let me know your thoughts in the comments area! I’d love to know if this is helping out some of you!

Come back tomorrow to check out the rest of the images from Rebekah & Michael’s wedding! They are the winners of my 2010 Free Wedding Giveaway which you can read about HERE!

I’m starting a new segment called “Before & After” (so original, right?) Well, I had a previous series called Recipe Mondays. I can no longer commit to specific days of the week for this, which is why I am calling my new series “Before and After”. That way I can do them whenever I have an inkling of free time in my schedule.

Let’s begin. How did I go from this….

to this?

First of all let me acknowledge the fact that it may not seem that a lot of time was spent on this image. But there was. First I removed all of the stray hairs and baby hairs from her face using the healing brush tool. That alone took forever and a day. I also removed any dust in her hair and in his jacket. Next, I selected her skin only using the lasso tool at 25 pixels. Now hover over the selected skin area, right click, and select “Layer Via Copy”. You have now created a layer in your layers panel that contains just her skin. Click on “Image” in the Photoshop menu, select “adjustments” & then “color balance”. For this particular image, it looked green/yellow & almost sickly to me as far as skin tone. I wanted it to reflect real life skin toning, so I slid the bars towards red, magenta, and blue (you can do an amount to your taste/liking). I then selected highlights and did the same thing. You can check and uncheck the preview box to see your changes before saving your changes. Once you have a color balance you like, click “OK” and return to your image. Flatten the image by selecting that command in the Photoshop menu. Now use the lasso tool again and select the eyes (feather the pixels around 15 pixels). Hover over the selected eye area, right click, and select “Layer Via Copy”. You have now created a layer in your layers panel that contains just her eyes. To make her eyes look less yellow/green, click on “Image” in the Photoshop menu, select “adjustments” & then “color balance”. Select mid-tone, slide the bars toward red, magenta & blue. Now select “highlights” and slide the bars towards red, magenta & blue to your liking until the whites of her eyes look more white than yellow/green. Next, here is where my Totally Rad Actions come in. I use them MOSTLY for adding a little kick to my images. Use the “Yin/Yang” tool and “yang” her face to lighten it up a little (opacity should be 100% and flow should be 25%). Then use the “Pro Retouch” tool and brush on her face (again opacity is at 100% and flow is at 25%) Once her face is brushed, I go into the layers panel and turn down the pro retouch opacity to 50%. This makes the skin look more natural and less airbrushed. Next I use “Select-O-Pop” and lightly brush her eye to slightly pop them out. Now apply “Boutwell Magic Glasses”. This is my favorite action. It gives all of my images that “kick” and dimension. Next I use “Warm it up, Kris” and turn down the opacity to 50%. And voila! I realize this installment is more for beginners but I would love to know if this is helping anyone out! Let me know in the comments area below!

I know it’s been a little while since I’ve REALLY blogged about anything on here, BUT, like I said in my last couple of posts, there just hasn’t been any time. I needed to focus on getting my whole family, including myself, back to healthy again AND I needed to do a lot of catching up on editing 2009 weddings. With that said, it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve done a “Recipe Monday” post and so let’s start off this week with one of those. Here’s a recipe using Totally Rad Actions on a portrait I did of my beautiful and stylish sister (technically sister-in-law, but we’re close enough that we practically are sisters), while she was here in Charlotte during our second snowfall of the winter.

Here’s the original.

Adjust curves as such.

Using Yin Yang, I Yang’d the face and Yin’d the snow to darken.

Boutwell Magic Glasses at 100%.

Flatten the image, then tilt & crop to correctly compose.

Use Green With Envy on lips and hair to pop out the colors.

Flatten the image and use Photoshop’s healing brush to remove facial imperfections. Next use TRA’s Pro Retouch tool on the face to smooth out the skin and reduce its opacity to 70%.

Warm It Up, Kris! at 80% opacity.

Pool Party at 50% opacity.

Cinnamon Toast at 30% opacity.

Use Select-O-Pop on eyes and hair.

And there you go! Here’s the Before & After!

I would love to hear your thought below!