Changing the feel of an image

Above is the Raw Image

Photoshop and Lightroom are tools to create the feel you experienced in an image when you made it. The thing is, it's impossible for others to appreciate the sensations you felt at the time. That's when you need to use tools to create the feel you experienced and that will allow others to get an idea of what it was all about.




Above is the Completed Image

As always click on the image to see it bigger.

The image at the top is the "Raw" data, the one underneath incorporates Lightroom and Photoshop manipulation to magnify the feel of the image.

It was cold and windy this morning so I wanted to impart those feelings in some way. When I get very cold I feel my vision becomes more focussed on a single point. My peripheral vision reduces. I sense a feeling of white and blue colours. You get the idea.

First things first - lens choice, I decided to go with a lensbaby with a wide open aperture to give a heap of blur away from the focal point, I then increased the shutter speed up to 1/640 sec for two reasons, one because I was at F/2.8 and two because I wanted to underexpose the ambient by a couple of stops (you know that cold feeling) so now I had to use a flash to bring up the exposure on the subject.

After I got home I imported the images into Lightroom, I cropped an image the way I wanted it. Then I changed the white balance temperature to something cold. I then increased the clarity and vibrance in the image to make it pop and little. What the heck is Clarity. It allows you to add punch in the midtone contrast. So now you know what the slider does. You'll find you'll put it up to at least 40 on most images. I then popped down to the Lens Correction panel to create a vignetting effect, to close down the image a little, you know that cold feeling.

I then exported the image to Photoshop and removed skin problems by using the Spot Healing and Healing Brush tools. I wasn't keen on the hard shadow under the nose created by my small light source. It would have been better to increase the size of my light source when I shot the image but because I didn't I applied a subtle smudge along the shadow line under the nose with the Smudge Tool.

I created a new layer, filled it with 50% grey, changed the blend mode to Soft Light and used a white brush at 10% to whiten up the knuckles a little (cold cold cold).

I then used PhotoKit Sharpener (plugin) to selectively sharpen Shelley's left eye and thumb and a bit of the scarf. And selectively smoothed out her skin with a tool in PhotoKit Sharpener.

Finally I applied an export sharpening for the web. Done! Any questions. Fire away.