Post a Pic: Before and Afters

POST A PIC RULES:
* No limits on the amount of pics we post
* Comments welcomed
* Do not post consecutive photos - wait for someone else to post a photo before adding another.
* If there have been no new photos for a few days then you can post another, but please do not add more than 3 consecutive photos.




I thought that it would be useful to have a Before and Afters thread so we can learn from each others processing work flow.
The idea is to post the picture Straight Out Of camera (SOOC) and then the finish edited image. Include with this a brief outline of what you did.
They don't need to be extreme edits - basic 'lighten and brightens' will be as useful as the more 'artistic' edits.

OK here is just a 5 minute quickie lighten and brighten I did on a snap taken last night and quickly edited now.
Would have used an older and better edited photo but I can't remember what I did to any of my old ones!
Done in Elements 6.



1. As his nose is scabby, I copied a bit of skin from his cheek to a new layer, positioned over his nose and applied a layer mask (using a downloaded action) and filled the layer mask in black. Then I look a white soft brush with a low opacity and painted over the scabby nose revealing new unscabby skin. This was just a quicky job - could do a better job with more time!

2. Covered up the bottom right corner but copying a section of background above it to a new layer and stretching it down.

3. Did a level adjustment layers tweaking all the colours until the overall picture was lighter and brighter and less yellowy.
Masked this back on the right shoulder to keep some detail on his gi.

4. Ran another adjustment layer pulling in both ends of the RGB histogram to create extra brightness and pop. I filled in the layer mask black and then used a soft white brush to reveal the eyes and giving them some pop. I reduced the opacity of the layer to 50% so the eyes weren't too bright.
(this is just one of many ways you can make eyes pop)

5. Saved as a psd file so I can go back and tweak any of those layers at anytime.

6. Flattened the image then sharpened for web using the Unsharp Mask set to 250/0.3/1 and re-saved as a jpeg.

Looking back it now he looks a little pasty so I'll probablly go back and warm him up later.

Hey, good idea


The lighting was NOT the setup i use as I went to a strobist meet. The Image itself is rubbish to put it politely, as I had no control of the shoot. I just went basically to meet new folk.
I wanted to add more pop to It as well as making It glamourous. I also thought it would be good to show you a B&A of what i can do. It took 8 hrs on and off as I kept coming back to it and readjusting. I did the obvious things like flipping the Image, removing her arm, changing the colour of her lip stick, skin blemishes and if you look close I repaired her tooth.
Hope you like It.


[IMG][url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/54634685@N08/6153160633/]

[IMG][url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/54634685@N08/6153708582/]

I'm speechless... you'd hardly know it was the same photo! Wow!

xx