“To Photoshop or not to Photoshop,
that is the question.” If Shakespeare
were here today, that would probably be a line in one of his plays.
On my last post, Allen asked: “With this photo what would you do in
Photoshop?” Good question.
Let me start by saying that for every
professional shoot I do, I use Photoshop on all the final images. Why? Because Photoshop has so many more tools that help me
develop the specific look that I want in the final image. Specially, Photoshop has much better
selection tools, healing and cloning tools and many plug-ins that can help you
achieve what you want.
Now, back to: what would I do on
this image in Photoshop? If I were
going to present this image for a photographic show, I would push it more to a
fine art image. I start with the cropped Lightroom image and open it in Photoshop. The first thing
that I would do is, remove the distracting leave on the left side of the flower
by cloning it out. When clone
something out, I do it on its own layer so that I can easily mask off errors I
make with the cloning tool. Next,
I would tray to make the whole left side of the flower look more symmetrical. I did this by copying the bottom leaf,
moving it to its new position and then changing its shape using the warp tool
under edit>transform>warp. I
do not want the two leaves looking like each other. I then took the image into nik Color Efex Pro and used the Extract Detail and Tonal Contrast filters on the flower. I believe these to filers really bring out detail and add punch to an image. I usually dial down the overall effects of the filter both in nik Color Efex Pro and also using the layer opacity in Photoshop. Finally, I would do my normal dodging and burning. I do dodging and burning on a
separate layer in the soft light mode.
I fill the layer with 50% grey and then paid at a low capacity (3-10%)
with white to dodge an area and black to burn an area. I continue to brush over the area until
I get it the shade I want.
That’s it.
Enjoy.
Camera settings: Nikon D4, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 90mm, ISO 1600, f/19 at 1/60th
of a second on a tripod.
Post Processing:
Lightroom 4—see above.
Photoshop CS5—see above.
Removing the small leave and replacing the other leaf made a big difference. It seems that you burned the one in LR a little more and changed the colors of the flower some. Like both photos but think I like the one in PS a little more.
ReplyDeleteTed
A big difference in how the photo has developed. How long did it take to do this one, including using Photoshop on it?
ReplyDeleteAllen
To fully appreciate the difference, you should have also included the image as you shot it in RAW. I think I would help people see what you did with your post process. Enjoyed the series.
ReplyDeleteTim K.