REMEMBER!
That’s the shooting done. My personal editing workflow is pretty simple. I start with RAW processing. This will involve lens correction, especially defringing, bringing up shadows slightly and adding a slight amount of contrast. If the highlights need recovering too, this is where I’ll do it. With my Nikon D700, I find that reducing saturating to -10 gives me a nice starting point with colour.
Photoshop. The very first step here is an initial clean up. My main focus here is to fix blemishes. With a clean image, I’ll dodge and burn with curves. After the curves layer, I colour grade. There are a million ways to do colour grade. My personal way is with a curves layer and slightly adjusting the colours here. I’ll throw a colour balance layer on top, and lastly a selective colour layer on top of that. I don’t use a set formula for grading, it’s more of a wing it and go with whatever looks good to me. On the rare occasion, I’ll add a solid colour layer with a soft light blend mode and a low opacity.
AFTER
With colour grading complete, I’ll sharpen with the surface blur method There’s a walk through of this technique on the page opposite. (I have no idea why this works, but it does!). I’ll save the image, and return to the raw processor for minor adjustments (if needed) and export the image out. That’s it! A shoot from start to finish! This is a basic shoot too, sometimes there is so much more that goes into them. But as a base, this is a good platform to start from. BUILDING THE SHOT
Pg.
BEFORE
Next I’ll export the shot into
40
After shooting one look, change up the lighting, outfit or location. (Or a combination of the 3). Always do the most ‘destructive’ idea last. Great examples of destructive ideas are; using water, powdered paint, tearing the outfit etc.
