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Portrait Processing

Posted: Thu 12 Sep 2019, 08:21
by Mike Farley
One of the things which came out of the image critique session at the club on 11 September is that people are not always aware of the options available for post capture processing. Amateur Photographer recently published an article (link below) which I found useful when working on one of my portraits, in particular the section about enhancing eyes. I found that a few simple tweaks really transformed the shot and made the subject's gaze far more compelling.

Unfortunately, that portion of the article refers to the use of the fulll version of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which is only available in Lightroom and Photoshop CC and not everyone uses. All is not lost, though, as alternative applications such as Photoshop Elements have other functions to achieve a similar result. For example, I would create a selection over the eye and then use the relevant adjustments to create the desired effect. When it comes to PSE, the Highlight/Shadow tool will be useful for darkening and lightening specific areas of the eye without altering other tones.

While the article is about portraits, many of the techniques shown have other uses. In the days of the darkroom, photographers would dodge and burn to enhance different areas of the image. Digital allows much finer control and many of my shots have a myriad of small local adjustments. The Radial filter in ACR is a particular favourite for such work for the purpose but is not exclusive. As previously stated, it is a matter of determining the desired changes and then using the appropriate functions in your photo editor of choice.

https://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/l ... hop-130841

I would also add that the Internet is an amazing resource and there are literally hundreds of articles and videos which demonstrate how to process images. Whatever you wish to achieve with whichever application, someone, somewhere can tell you how to do it.