Shutter Sisters Challenge – Before and After

These are just a couple of the images T and I shot last year driving home from spring break. We pulled off the highway to drive the back roads for a while and found this incredible location to shoot some portraits. Right in the back seat of the car, T changed into the bridesmaid dress that we had bought for $5 at the Hilton Head salvation army (when we bought the wedding dress) and we took a bunch of photos.

Before – the sky was a little washed out in this photo and T was in shadow so I decided to play around with it. First I duplicated the image, masked the sky and went to adjustments/exposure/gamma correction to fix the sky on one layer and then the bottom layer I worked with the 'selective color' adjustment to fix the dark shadows in her dress and brighten her up a bit.

After - a little brighter image is the result. Better? I'd like to know what you think.



Before


After
If I play around with an image in photoshop, the first thing I usually do is go to 'selective color' to make adjustments. If it's an image of a person, I select red and I take down the percentage of black. This clears up skin nicely – T was a little sunburned and this process toned that down a little.


...and Beyond
Here I added a texture just for fun. I like the warm color but I'm not sure I like the texture – cracks on skin don't look very pretty. I needed to take the time to remove them from her skin.

I guess I was tired tonight and didn't do these to the best of my abilities. I do this sort of thing every day with my job. But it's strange, sometimes I don't take the time with my own work. I did these hurriedly, realizing I had to submit tonight and now I'm embarrassed at submitting them at all. I think I prefer the original SOOC shots.

Comments

I like them all except for the cracks on T's skin in the textured photo. I think the first photo has an interesting moodiness to it with T in the shadow.
Char said…
to fix the cracks - lasso the area then feather it and apply a gaussian blur (about 50 pixels) to the texture. You will keep the color tone of the texture but will lose the cracks.

I love the textured shot if you do that - the color processing adds to the vintage appeal.
Genie Sea said…
I like the 'afters' a lot; and I like the beyond too. It might not be conventionally pretty, but it's interesting :)
ELK said…
oh a red head in teal ~fantastic~
I noticed the crossroad sign and thought it poignant
georgia b. said…
shutter sisters is the best, isn't it?

i agree, the second version of the first shot is better. i love that we can "fix" our shots like this.

that second shot is just wonderful! i love the color of her dress against the tracks. and her pose. sweet little pic.

it would be so much fun if we could all get together for a photoshop tips and tricks workshop, wouldn't it?
Anonymous said…
Pft, I liked them ALL before and afters. You are such a great photographer on top of everything amazing that you do.
Vanessa said…
oh, i like the beyond the most! it's unique!

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