Short tutorial on how I process some of my portraits similar to the Stranger project...
I've been sent many emails with regards to my PP work, so here we go....
The process is not very difficult so long as you're familiar with photoshop. Before even thinking about the processing I nearly always ensure that my subject is well lit, the less shadows on the subjects face then the easier it will be on the processing. I nearly always use a silver reflector, I've moved away from using flashes and learn to control the lighting by natural methods. It's not always possible but I try to pick a background that has some interestingness to it and that fit's the subjects daily environment be it work or leisure..
This is by no means my own method but more a collective effort from random users across the internet that use similar processing to create the look they desire..
Before processing this is how the image looked
Large aperture such as 1.4 work's best.
The workflow:
LR adjustments for colour correction
- White balance adjusted - Temp and Tint to give a natrual look
- Recovery adjustment's if needed for the blown out areas
- Camera calibration adjustment's such as red and blue saturation
Image opened from LR to CS4 - I use Layer mask's for nearly every layer I adjust
- Layer duplicated and Selective background darkend
- Cross processed using curves or Color Efex pro - Method L05
- Adjustment's for eyes
- Facial adjustment using the dodge tool for darkening and lighting (eg: Under the eyes lightened)
- Selective saturation
- Colour adjusted using Vibrance and Curves
- Contrast and level adjustments
- Selective sharpening
- High Pass filter - Radius of 10 pixels and layer mode changed to soft light
- High Pass layer masked and selective areas applied
- Final Crop and border applied to taste
- Saved back to LR and exported for usage
The above method is a simple overlook of my workflow, it's by far more detailed but for more information you can check out the following thread (German) for other method's and opionion's..
Final Result:
