From Studio to Finished Image
I’ve received a lot of requests from people asking about my work flow and how to achieve the same results. I’m going to show you how to recreate this image:
The hard work was done with my lighting set up in order to get the right shadows and highlights. The lighting set up that I used is called butterfly lighting, where the soft box is in front of the model, pointing down at a 45⁰ angle approximately a foot to two feet above the camera. I also had a hair light with barn doors on a boom directly above the models head, so that her hair wouldn’t disappear into the background and to give highlights across the shoulders.
You can also add a reflector at the front to bounce the light and fill in the shadows under the nose and chin if you wish.
This is a beautiful and flattering light, which enhances the right features and smoothes out others. Also depending on how the model poses, you can achieve different effects with the same set up.
- As you can see the image on the left is a perfect example of butterfly lighting and how beautifully it can light the subject, when they are facing straight on the camera.
- In the centre image that we’re working on, you can see that the lighting still flatters when the model turns her face to the side.
- In the image on the right, the same lighting was still used, but the model leaned forward creating a harsher effect that is still striking never the less.
All three of these photos were edited in the same way.
This is the image as shot in camera:
You can see that because we got the lighting right in the studio and the exposure correct, the raw image doesn’t need a lot of work, ie playing with adding in shadows, highlights or fixing spots that are too dark or overexposed etc.
The next step is to do a quick correction, where under eye circles are minimised and blemishes retouched. The model is a bit rosy as it was hot the day this image was taken, so I’ve gone through and evened out her skin tone and then did an overall skin softening.
So the layers that have been created so far:
- Skin retouch with the clone tool set at 50% opacity
- Color fill layer, set to blend mode hue and 50% opacity with a mask for the skin only to reduce redness.
- Skin smoothing layer that softens the skin.
All of these layers are in a group labelled skin retouch.
I applied a channel mixer adjustment layer to convert the image to black and white.
I then created a composite layer of all retouched layers, excluding the channel mixer layer, placed on the top of the layer stack and changed the blend mode to overlay. This increased the contrast and saturation of image in a controllable way.
Final step here is to fill in the colour of her lips as they seem to fade away into the background. I did this with another colour fill layer, with the blend mode set to soft light.
So the layers that you will end up with are the following:
- Skin retouch with the clone tool set at 50% opacity
- Colour fill layer, set to blend mode hue and 50% opacity with a mask for the skin only to reduce redness.
- Skin smoothing layer that softens the skin.
All of these layers are in a group labelled skin retouch.
- Channel mixer layer
- Composite layer of all the retouched layers with blend mode set to overlay
- Colour fill layer, set to blend mode softlight with a mask for the lips only.
So there it is, from start to finish. You can add in a few extra steps, such as a curves adjustment layer underneath the overlay layer to bring out the shadows a bit more, or you can run a high pass to sharpen the image up or just selective sections of it, such as her hair and necklace with a mask, the possibilities are only limited by how you envision the final product.
Happy Shooting!
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# Garry
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# Alfie
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# brom
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# Dan
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http://www.deanbreaker.com/ Amy
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http://www.deanbreaker.com/ Amy
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Jeff
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Jeff
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# Lenny
