Ok Guys and gals I wanted ask you all if you would be down for this. I want to see you all post in here before and after pictures, and what i mean is show a picture before you post process, and then after. I have seen some photographers do this on there blogs and its amazing so if you are up to it it would be cool.

Here's a couple of mine:

Before:


After:



Before:


After:



Have fun!!

Stewart C.

Well here is one that i did about a week ago. I did this for an assigment. There are three pictures that i took in the final picture. One of the birds, one of the background, and the final one of the model. Comments are very welcome.

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From yesterday's engagement session...

Ill try, I like this thread.

Melissa O

good thread!


very cool! the final picture looks like 1 picture! how long did it take you? What are you useing the picture for?

Here are mine...nothing exciting, but they are what I found first!

Fun thread Chris! Love seeing this stuff

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basically just an exposure shift & curves to make it low key

Love these and really is cool to see the cropping and ps'ing after the fact. It is so different with each photographer.

Thanks. The picture took me about 3-4 hours.. I am not sure. I worked on it for about a week, on and off. At the school I am attending, The Hallmark Institute of photography, we had to do a digital alteration. so I thought of this and did it.

Guys this is awesome. So many different styles and different feels to everyones photography. Keep them coming!!

Stewart C.

These kinds of threads are my favorite. Here is one from a recent newborn shoot. I played with curves and blew out the background. The mom kept gasping, because she was saying this is exactly what he was doing in the womb with his leg all the time!

Stewart,

On your first one, it looks like you've blown the detail of the bride's dress out. You can see the embroidery on it clearly in the first one, but the second one goes to white. Is that just cause it's small? Can't really tell.

Here's a few from me. I really don't know whether to be pleased with the PP...or extremely embarassed about the original!!!! I have had my 30D for six months now, and I've only just sent it in to Canon to have the metering checked. Turns out it wasn't metering correctly all along! NOW it is. YAY! I can't put all the blame on the camera though. I still 'stuff up' pretty badly sometimes. Thank heavens for RAW and PP....gee, I think maybe I've said THAT before!




















Kevin...interesting what you said about blowing out the dress. I'm guilty of doing this myself from time to time, especially with Kubota actions. Sometimes it's very hard to get dramatic or funky results without losing dress detail. I'm interested in opinions on this....cause it does worry me. IS it o.k. to lose dress detail in SOME dramatic and XP shots? There are always lots of shots where you can see the dress detail.....so is it cool to have some where it's blown, in the name of artiness?

Annie

I don't think there's any rule... I prefer to keep as much dress detail as possible -- they usually paid a lot for the dang thing, I'd like them to see the details.

I don't like seeing things blown out if possible to avoid. I think it looks amateurish. If you're going for a hyper-dramatic special effect, then that's a different story, but if it just looks like you got slightly hot in your post processing (or in camera), then it looks more like a mistake to me.

But, I'm pretty opinionated, too..

Ah...yes.

But if I didn't value your opinion so highly, I wouldn't ask for it in the first place!

Yeah, I tend to agree with that....I think "artsy" is fun to play with, but sometimes when I see people attempt artsy, I think it ends up looking like they simply don't know what they're doing with a camera. However, this is not how I feel about Chris's picture - I actually really like how it looks! I think it's fine to blow out the details A BIT on a few pics to get a more dramatic effect, but I don't think it's good when all the pics look like that.

Hey swan,

I think that its just because its small. Heres the same picture in a bigger size.



I am so stoked that you all are diggin the thread. I thought it would be alot of fun.

Keep them coming people.

Stewart C.



I agree with you stacy fully. I do like alot of the edgy, grunge,artistry photos, but you cant do that with all of your pics. Especially with what your client wants. You may like that style but your client may hate them, so I tend to make some the style i like but keeping in mnd what they would want as well.

Stewart C.



Great Job here annie!! I like what you did with the pics you had to work with. I think your PP is great on all of them. The grooms men is a tad dark for me but they are great. I especially love the one of the bride and groom in the car and the PP you did on that. Top Notch in my book!!!

Stewart C.

Thanks so much Stewart....so nice of you to say!
Funny thing about the groomsmen...you're absolutley right. I'm so worried about blowing out dresses that I failed to notice I'd sent the poor old guys into a pit of blackness!!!!
I do normally notice stuff like that....but this shot was SO funny, and I was diggin' my groovy XP colours so much that I didn't notice.

BTW...that 'car' is actually a church pew!

Annie

Here's my contribution. All done in lightroom.

No problem. Oh and that was a Church pew? Man I didn't see that. I like the colors alot in your pics. Very cool indeed!!

Stewart C.

Ooh...this is fun!

Ok, here's one of my before's. I think it's a pretty ordinary shot.



And here's the after:

Very cool jen. i like the border and how you whitened out the background on the after one. Man these are so cool to see. More I tell you More!!!

Stewart C.

here is one i posted on my blog a while back... i shoot everything in camera very flat and un-sharp... so my b/f and after is pretty dramatic.

Annie--KILLER processing work. Seriously, I LOVED seeing those. Whats your editing program of choice? Photoshop? Lightroom? Gorgeous!!

Matt--Crazy good work! What a neat topic, great posts. What program do you use as well?

Matt...maybe it's because the image is reduced but it seems oversharpened to me. I love the colour and contrast though.


Thanks Stewart!

did you click to view it full size?

I did, but it wouldn't open for me.


Oh...wait, I just got it.
Nope...looks better full size!

http://www.mattterry.biz/IMG_0515_edit.jpg

I did manage to open it. It looks great.
Why though do you shoot the originals with such little contrast??

i just feel it gives me more flexibility... i can always add contrast but you cant necessarily take it away... i shoot in raw so i can adjust the contrast on thousands of images with a few clicks so i like the flexibility of shooting with low contrast...

My contribution:

before:


after

Alex this is great!!!! I love the black and white PP on this. Matt I remember seeing those pics before. really cool color on them and so clean and clear. very good. Come on people, I know theres more of you that want to post

i am going to find a few more of mine just to keep things going.

Stewart C.

Matt - love the richness of the colors in that picture!

Alex - great b/w

Chris - yay! i'm so glad you started this thread. i love seeing before and afters!

I was a guest at this wedding and although I was near the front, I had a really bad angle and was shooting into the sun.






And here's one from Hawaii.

OH MY GOSH!!!!! Serena these are amazing. the one of hawaii........um..........SO GOOD!!!!!!!! And how you were able to take pictures that were blown out, or just not as good as you wanted and look at what you did with them. TOP NOTCH!!!!!!'

Come on..........more, more, MORE!!!!

Stewart C.

Gee...thanks. As I said I think I can attribute my PP skills to my sometimes VERY poor shooting technique! It's been a case of 'have to' ......to rescue my own work! Either that or chuck it in altogether. ha ha ha Don't worry....I am working on the shooting, and gradually getting better. I think it's the time frame and pressure of weddings that seems to magically undo pretty much everything I know about metering and flash. Sometimes I get rather anxious and flustered....and I just stuff up. Photoshop (and RAW) are this girls best friends! I wish it weren't so...but until I learn to meter correctly ALL the time, I NEED my PS skills.

I use Lightroom for RAW (love love love Lightroom), and PS CS2. I also use all 3 sets of Kubotas Actions.....wow....that's a LOT of actions to choose from. THAT alone is enough to slow down my workflow I LOVE them!

Annie

Matt...I just love this shot. (I do remember seeing this posted elsewhere....it's not the kind of shot anyone could forget!)
I love it because to me the tone and density are perfect, while still maintaining natural looking colors. It's stunning, and would really appeal to most clients, unlike some more heavilly processed images which are more subject to taste!


I really get what you're saying about lower contrast being more versatile. I had been beefing up the contrast and saturation in Lightroom, but decided to stop doing that. I like using Kubotas actions, but they tend to be VERY punchy and dramatic. If I apply them to a fairly 'flat' image....the results are great, and don't need as much tweaking and turning down. So now I'm converting my RAW to jpeg a lot flatter than I was before.


Alex....That's a beautiful shot, and a stunning BW conversion. SO romantic!

Serena....GREAT job rescuing those 'into the sun' shots. They are gorgeous....and now....I want to go to Hawaii... NOW!

This thread is great....any more? I wanna see more!

Annie

I use Kubota's actions all the time. You can lower opacity of the layers with effect if you see it too punchy.

Yeah....I love tweaking the actions, and I do so all the time. I've even re-recorded quite a lot of them to my own taste, and re-named them something different. 'Annie's Fuji snap it in half' for example....ha ha ha I use that one ALL the time.

What I meant was, a lot of the actions are very punchy, and if I put them on an image thats already very contrasty I find the best fix is to go to the original layer and flatten it out a bit. After doing this A LOT (especially with 'warm & snappy'...my fave) I realized it would be much quicker and simpler if my images weren't so contrasty in the first place!


Just my way of doing it....


Annie

sweet! nice work!

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Thanks guys! Yea...I was amazed at how much I was able to get out of a jpeg...especially on that Hawaii shot.

I've watched this thread and have been admiring all the befores and afters! Here's one from me from a recent shoot.

Ro - love the color of the pp on that! looks great!

i have a lightroom preset that i'm totally in love with right now that is similar to that look/color. i'll probably share it here on osp soon.

This has to be one of my personal fav.

before
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after
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looks a little yellow to me compared to what I see in ps, but close enough.

That's probably the best example so far. Good stuff.

I found a few more... I love seeing these from everyone!

wow, I am actually pretty ashamed to show some of my befores! (I choose some seniors since there was alot of wedding posted already) but the last one was purely a save. It was in a series and the flash didn't fire for this one. I worked on it for so long I'm not even sure that I could do it again and match it!

ooh....wow! those are really great! good job!

here's one more. she's this anime pop star. i had to clean up some of the bags under her eyes and i think it made her look a bit younger.
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Wow, beautiful! Can you share with us how you did it?

-TM

here are a couple of mine
oh and these are both my daughters
and were so mad that I made them wear those STUPID things are their head.
(I had a vision and it worked LOL)
These are VERY PS and don't usually go that far, but wanted something for my fireplace

Erin...absolutely STELLAR work! Very very well done!!!! I don't know what else to say...except I'm going back for another look. (look & learn ha ha ha ha)

here is one more. It was LATE and no sun. natural light but underexposed alot.