The Process(for this photo)

For the most part, most of my photos are edited with the same process. This particular photo ended up doing a lot better than any other I have posted, and I think part of the reason was that I posted different steps of the edit on my story. 

To start off, I could not have done this edit, or any edit on my own. I try my best to have others look at my work as I edit. By having others look, I am able to fix things that wouldn't have come to mind. 

AKH_7193.jpg

Camera: Nikon D800

Lens: Nikon 85mm 1.8 @ 2.8

The first step was simple, colors. I always start my edits in Lightroom to take full advantage of the RAW file, although you could also use photoshop. For this photo, I started with my MT001 preset. I wanted to add more blue to contrast her yellow sweater, but not go too far with the teal because it would take away from the contrast in the colors. I brought out some contrast as well. The sky was too blown out for me to fix, so I decided I would get back to it in photoshop. 

AKH_7193before.jpg

The next step is where most of my time went. I retouched the skin, not going to say exactly how, but I will say that it was not using frequency separation. I removed a spot on the bench using the clone stamp tool because it was a little distracting. I also added some bokeh to the right of Nicole to balance out the photo. Elliot mentioned that the bokeh on the right grabbed a lot of his attention and that it would balance the photo better if I added some more on the right. Adding it to the right really balanced out the photo after looking at it. 

AKH_7193retouch.jpg

For the next step, I fixed the color on the photo. I changed the hue on the yellows to make them a little more orange. This added a little more contrast to the photo against the blues. I also dodged and burned the photo a bit in order to make it look like the light was a little stronger, for a future step. 

AKH_7193DB.jpg

The sky was too far gone for me to be able to bring it back out. I decided the best thing to do was to just find another one online and add it in. I added it in, changed the hue to match the other blues on the photo, and then blur it to make it look like it was originally there. After I also added in a little bit of flare on the left for the next step. 

AKH_7193sky.jpg

For the flare, I used two different layers. The first was to add a more general glow using a radial gradient. Then, for the second one, I set the same type of layer but more visible, and with a smaller radius. The first layer had a low visibility because it covered part of her face and removed details the more visible it was. 

AKH_7193Flare.jpg

The final steps were some general adjustments to add in more contrast in the photo. I like photos with heavy contrast, so I added a bit more in. I also added a bit of vignetting and corrected the color last time. The layers I used for these, were hue/saturation, color balance, exposure and curves layers in photoshop.

AKH_7193k.jpg

Final Image. 

Model

Nicole Holder

Location

Pier 7, San Francisco