{how do you edit?}

some of our most frequently asked questions are about editing. how, where, what, why....you name it. so, i thought i would be fun to ask some of our favorite photogs to share with us how they edit.
there are so many different editing styles out there that i'm sure no two people do it the same way. some are very minimal and some are extremely in depth. below you will find some different styles, techniques, tips and info. i hope you find this very useful. each photo will have the sooc (straight out of the camera) version, as well as the edited version.

thank you so much to all the photographers for sharing this information with us!!! you all amaze me!!



images from AMBER, LITTLE MOON PHOTOGRAPHY

Both photos I did a custom white balance and made sure I was getting good directional light by posing the baby nearly 90 degrees to the light source.

photo #1-sooc

Opened in ACR and:

* + .75 Exposure

* Recovered the blown red spots on hat dots

* Added +2 Brightness

* Added +2 Blacks

* Added +6 clarity

Opened in CS3 and:

* Cropped a bit of the blanket out

* Curves level adjustment – pulled middle curve straight up just a tad then pulled the bottom left to the right a little.

* Flattened, created a new layer and ran Portraiture and reduced the opacity to 19%, within the Portraiture settings I did +2 Brightness and -1 warmth to take some red out and brighten the skin.

* Next I went in and did a lot of cloning, the baby had red marks on his arm from the previous position from the blanket. He also had some baby acne I needed to fix.

* Next I did a Selective Color layer, went to “neutrals” and did -3 magenta, -2 cyan, and +1 yellow to make the baby’s skin more his natural color and less red.

* +5 contrast

* slight unsharp mask and then saved as a JPG.

after edits

photo #2- sooc

Opened in ACR and:

• + 3 Brightness
• + 8 Clarity
• While I did do a Custom White Balance (I use Ed Pierce’s Photovision Target) I warmed up the baby a bit to 7200.

Opened in CS3 and:

• cropped and rotated a bit
• Curves level adjustment – pulled middle curve straight up just a tad then pulled the bottom left to the right a little.
• Flattened, created a new layer and ran Portraiture and reduced the opacity to 19%, within the Portraiture settings I did +2 Brightness and -1 warmth to take some red out and brighten the skin.
• flattened and cloned out some skin flakes.
• Selective color layer: -1 magenta, -2 yellow, +3 blacks.
• +3 contrast
• slight unsharp mask and saved as JPG.

after edits





image from ANDEE, CRAVE PHOTOGRAPHY

photo- sooc


Editing is my favorite phase of the whole process!!!

Here are the steps:

1) Florabella action "sharpen and defog"

2) Coffee Shop action "powder room 2" for skin

3) Duplicate layer and set to "multiply" blending mode

4) TRA action "rusty cage"

5) Filter >sharpen>unsharp mask at amount of 40-60%

after edits

images from LISA, LISA LUCKY PHOTOGRAPHY

Picture #1- sooc

open in ACR and adjust exposure (if necessary), highlights (if necessary), white balance
open in Photoshop
crop having extended the canvas slightly on the left and top of the image
midtone bump in curves, flatten
duplicate layer and change blending mode to soft light
reduce layers opacity to 50%
selective color layer reducing red/yellows only applied to skin tones
hue/saturation adjustment layer to remove blues/cyans/magenta color casts to white dresses
selective color layer to target the reds in the apples...I believe I adjusted the black, yellows and magentas
added a texture, changed blending mode to "overlay", reduced opacity
burned edges at a low opacity with burn tool

after edits



Picture #2- sooc

open in ACR and adjust exposure (if necessary), highlights (if necessary), white balance
open in Photoshop
crop
midtone bump in curves, flatten
duplicate layer and change blending mode to soft light
reduce layers opacity to 50%
add gradient map making sure the color pallette is black/white
burned edges at low opacity with burn tool

after edits



Picture #3- sooc

open in ACR and adjust exposure (if necessary), highlights (if necessary), white balance
open in Photoshop
crop
midtone bump in curves, flatten
duplicate layer and change blending mode to soft light
reduce layers opacity to 40%
selective color layer reducing blacks in the reds and yellows by -10
flatten
duplicate layer, run Portraiture at 40%
clone out any small blemishes on skin

after edits





image from LIZ, ELIZABETH LEIGHTON PHOTOGRAPHY

photo- sooc

The sun was going down quickly so I just wanted to keep shooting. I love this shot of Lauren but obviously, it's dark. Here are my edits

In LR:

1. Straighten slightly

2. Adjust exposure to +.80

3. Brightness to +68

4. Use LR preset Tone Curve - Strong Contrast

5. Felt the image was a tad too magenta so I pulled the tint to -14

6. Contrast to +7

7. Blacks to 7

8. Vibrance and Clarity to +21

Export to Photoshop

1. Add Light action (sorry, I can't remember who's it is)

2. Child's Play Warm Up - adjusted to 25%

3. TRA Straight Edge - adjusted to 18%

after edits



make sure to stay tuned because i have some more examples from other photographers and different styles coming up in a few days.

thanks again to amber, andee, lisa and liz!!!