I know, I know……….every post I promise that I’m going to start updating again……….then I don’t.  Well this time I mean it, mostly because I have recently destroyed my knee and am imprisoned to a splint, not allowed to bend it for three months. (for any of you anatomy folks…..I ruptured my patella tendon…..not good)
So basically, that leaves me with a lot more “spare” time on my hands, so I decided to develop my post skills in Lightroom and Photoshop.  I’ve also been going through my archives and realized that I have taken ALOT of pictures……..I’m never going to print them all, so I may as well put them somewhere for someone else to see.
So…….for the next few months I’ll be going back through the archives and posting fairly frequently, hopefully with new photoshop techniques and tips.
I’ve been sort of obsessed with portraits for a little while now, and how to make my wedding photos not quite so flat and boring.  So…..not having any friends or models close by, I sat on a stool and took my own portrait to mess around with…………here are the results.

I don’t really have time right now to post the full details on the edits, but if there’s any interest, I’ll do a full “how-to” post, or I can e-mail you.

Here is the original, unedited, Lightroom converted jpg that I started with.

First Edit was an attempt to acheive a Dragan-ish image (meaning the style created by Andrzej Dragan…..just google his name and you’ll see what I’m talking about)

There are actually a bunch of different ways to do this…….you can even find some photoshop actions that will attempt to automate the process, but a manual processing gives much better results, as every image needs to be processed a little different.  The core of getting the look seems to lie in a few steps involving duplicating your background and changing the blend mode, adding brightness/contrast adjustment layers (sometimes different layers with masks for specific parts of the image) and some selective, dodging, burning, sharpening and blurring to either bring out or fade details.
For instance, depending on which path you choose in your layers, at some point you will need to use the dodge tool (set to “highlights”) to bring out the highlights of the image.  In the same manner, you will need to burn (set to shadows) lines and wrinkles to accentuate the detail.  Desaturation helps the moody feeling, as does using a dark background.  Finally you will end up sharpening more than usual to bring out some of those details even more.
Here is the end result……..I’m still not 100% happy with this, so I guess I just have to play around some more.

If you do a google search for “Dragan Style” you should find quite a few tutorials, experiment with the steps in each of them, and mix and match what you can until you get the effect you want.

These next two were actually “happy accidents” that occured on the way to the previous image.

In this one, I wasn’t happy with how much detail the “Draganizing” (for lack of a better term) was bringing out in my skin  *cough*pores*cough*.   So I tried adding a masked  Gaussian blur layer………but I inserted the layer in the wrong place and came out with a pretty bizarre effect.  It reminded me of that digital movie with Keanu Reeves….”A Scanner Darkly”, and sort of that new style of  “digitally painting” over portraits……..although not nearly as good as that.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool.

Definately something to keep in mind if I do any more work with musicians…..could make some cool promo stuff or album art.

Like I said, this next edit came by accident as well, but I loved it as an end result.  It was actually an adjustment layer meant to enhance black detail in one of my attempts at the first edit.

It reminded me a lot of a pencil sketch……but not like the  penci sketch filter in PS.

This final edit (for now) was completel done in Lightroom…..actually for the sake of time and simplicity (and probably laziness)  I try to get most of my processing done in LR as opposed to photoshop.  At least if I’m working on a whole batch of images, like a wedding shoot.  For single shot edits, PS still has way more power, but Lightroom has a much easier/quicker flow.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent….back to the edit.  It’s a simple high contrast black and white, but I’ve started to do them differently and I really like the result.
Basically, I turn up the exposure and fill light (and sometimes brightness if I need to ), then compensate by turning up the blacks.  That gives you nice bright highlights and slightly crushed shadows.   To increase the contrast, I set the point curve to “high contrast” then adjust the contrast slider to taste.  I find setting a high Clarity level helps bring out some of the detail as well, mine is usually up in the 60’s for this type of edit.  Depending on your colors, you might want to mess around with the color channels in grayscale mode to lighten or darken selective areas.

So that’s it…….that last one is probably my favorite edit to do right now, and for the most part its how I process all my wedding B&W’s.

I’m off to find something else to try.

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