Chapter Nine. Using Post Like a Pro

Step-by-Step Recipes to Get “The Look” Using Lightroom and/or Photoshop

Have you ever looked at someone else’s photo, maybe a famous photographer, and thought to yourself, “My camera lets me choose the f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO. Which of those three created that desaturated skin tone, those tonal contrast effects, and that three-dimensional look to this image?” If so, then this chapter is for you, because what you’ll learn in this chapter is that you can’t get those looks “in-camera” since all you really have are f-stops, shutter speed, and ISO. So, the secret to getting those “looks” has to be something else, and quite frankly, it is. It’s a special set of controls, buried deep within the menus of most of today’s Canon, Nikon, and Sony DSLRs, that are only revealed to a certain number of photographers who, quite frankly, pay a yearly royalty to unlock these secret features and, once they do, they actually have control over four distinct in-camera controls that aren’t available to the general public. Here, today, and for the first time ever (well, that I’ve seen anyway), I’m going to disclose what these extra “paid for” features are as my way of leveling the playing field for all those folks who knew the pros had some advantage, some edge that the average person didn’t have, and who had no way of accessing this extra power. These extra four controls are: (1) Spatial, (2) Orthogonal, (3) Retraction, and (4) Expansion, although most pros just use the acronym SORE, as in “you’ll be sore once you realize I just made this whole thing up.” Oh, come on, this late in the book and you don’t know by now that these chapter intros are generated by a potent combination of over-the-counter hallucinogenics and a near-lethal dose of complex carbohydrates and sugar normally found only in Kellogg’s Honey Smacks breakfast cereal or Mobil 1 Synthetic Motor Oil (whichever comes first)?

TECHNIQUE: You only need to move three sliders to get this look:

(1) We desaturate the entire image by dragging the Vibrance slider to the left. I don’t have an amount I drag it to every time, it just depends on the image. So, just look at the screen while you drag and, when it looks good to you, stop dragging.

(2) Increase the amount of Clarity. Technically, this adds midtone contrast, but what you’ll see is that it brings out texture and detail and makes things shinier (like the highlights on her skin, here). You do have to be careful, though, about adding clarity to women’s skin because it can make them look bruised and rough. If that happens, just use the Adjustment Brush instead: set all the other sliders to zero and raise the Clarity amount, then just paint over everything but her skin. Problem solved.

(3) Drag the Contrast slider to the right to add more contrast and give it more of that bleach bypass look (it helps darken the sky up a little bit, too!).

OTHER OPTIONS: If you like using plugs-in (I sure do), then here are two that have excellent built-in, one-click, bleach bypass effects, and that work with Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, or Apple Aperture:

(1) OnOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite (www.ononesoftware.com) comes with a plug-in called Perfect Effects, and it has a Bleach Bypass filter that works really nicely.

(2) The Google Nik Collection’s Color Efex Pro plug-in (www.google.com/nikcollection/) has a Bleach Bypass filter that also nails this look in just one click.

TECHNIQUE: Just a few sliders:

(1) Drag the Clarity slider to the right until the skin looks really textured (here, I dragged it all the way over to +85, but of course how far you drag depends on your subject’s skin and how it looks as you drag, so don’t get locked into using my number.

(2) Since the Clarity slider increases midtone contrast, it tends to make parts of the image darker and some brighter. I’ve found that with skin it generally makes it darker, so I usually drag the Shadows slider to the right until the brightness of the face looks normal again (in this case, I dragged to +50).

(3) I also went to the Effects panel and, under Post Crop Vignetting, dragged the Amount slider to the left to darken the edges of the image and put the focus on his face.

OTHER OPTIONS: Here are two plug-ins (for Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, or Apple Aperture) that both have great clarity-like effects:

(1) OnOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite comes with a plug-in called Perfect Effects that has a Tonal Contrast preset under the Tone Enhancer filter.

(2) The Google Nik Collection’s Color Efex Pro plug-in has a Tonal Contrast filter that also looks great, and in its settings, there are presets that vary the degrees of the effect. (The default setting has less of an effect than you see here. The Strong preset is more like what you see above.)

TECHNIQUE: It’s a simple technique with two parts:

(1) Select your bracketed images in Lightroom (or Bridge), then go under the Photo menu, under Edit In, and choose Merge to HDR Pro (in Bridge, it’s under Tools, under Photoshop). This opens the Merge to HDR Pro window you see above.

(2) Choose the Scott 5 preset at the top right (that’s a preset I created that Adobe asked if they could include and, of course, I was delighted). Now, turn on the Edge Smoothness checkbox to soften the effect, and then click OK to merge these three images into one single image.

(3) Duplicate the Background layer, and then apply the Gaussian Blur filter at 50 pixels. Lower the Opacity of this layer (in the top-right corner of the Layers panel) to 50% and change the layer’s blend mode (at the top left of the panel) from Normal to Soft Light to add a slight glow to the image. Lastly, add a Levels adjustment and click the Auto button.

OTHER OPTIONS: While this technique was done with Photoshop’s built-in HDR feature, if you don’t have Photoshop, there are two other popular options:

(1) The #1 most-popular software for creating HDR tone-mapped images is Photo-matix Pro from HDRsoft. It’s pretty much the software that people who are really serious about HDR use, and it will do everything from realistic to surrealistic (like we see here), but you can push the surreal look farther there than you can with HDR Pro, and that’s one reason why it’s so popular—you can turn the amp up to 11 (so to speak). You do not have to have Photoshop or Lightroom to use Photo-matix; it can be used as a standalone product.

(2) The Google Nik Collection of plug-ins (for Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, and Apple Aperture) has a popular HDR plug-in called HDR Efex Pro. (Note: This particular plug-in does not work with Photoshop Elements, you have to have the full version of Photoshop.)

TECHNIQUE: You’re going to use the built-in Radial Filter tool for this:

(1) Click on the Radial Filter tool up in the toolbar at the top left of the Camera Raw window (as seen here; or at the top of the right side Panels area in Lightroom’s Develop module). Click where you want the center of your spotlight and drag outward. As you drag, an oval will appear showing you the size of your spotlight—keep dragging until it’s the size you want it (you can see how far I dragged it above). Now, scroll to the bottom of the panel on the right side and click the Outside radio button, so that changes we make only affect the area outside the oval. Whatever’s inside our oval (the nun, in this example) remains untouched.

(2) To darken the area around the nun (so you don’t see the other people in the pews around her—I turned off the preview, so you could see them here), click on the – (minus sign) button to the left of the Exposure slider to reset all the other sliders to zero and lower the Exposure to –50. Drag that Exposure slider farther to the left and, as you do, the area around the nun starts to go to black. Her highlights are pretty bright, too, so you may want to click on New, switch to Inside, and lower the Highlights, as well (I did, anyway). Lastly, when you’re done, you may want to switch to the Adjustment Brush, lower the Exposure slider there, and paint over the end of the pew (to her right), so it’s not so bright.

OTHER OPTIONS: You could do this directly in Photoshop (or Elements) if you didn’t want to use Camera Raw by duplicating the Background layer, and then changing the layer’s blend mode to Multiply, which makes the entire image much darker. Next, click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel (it’s the third icon from the left), which puts a layer mask over the darker layer. Set your Foreground color to black, get the Brush tool (B), choose a really large-sized, soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker up in the Options Bar, and then click once over the nun to reveal the original version of her from the Background layer below this darker layer.

TOOLS: This can be done in either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

TECHNIQUE: You’re going to combine two images into one:

(1) To create this grungy, aged look, you’re going to need a paper texture. If you have some really old paper, you could scan it, but I just went to iStock.com, found this royalty-free image for $2, and used it as my paper texture.

(2) Now, in Photoshop (or Elements), use the Move tool (V) to drag-and-drop this old paper image on top of your main image, and then press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to bring up Free Transform. Click-and-drag the corner points outward until your paper texture completely covers your image, then press Return (PC: Enter).

(3) Press Command-U (PC: Ctrl-U) to bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog. Drag the Saturation slider to the left a bit to desaturate the paper image a little, so it’s not quite as colorful and looks a bit washed out. Lastly, in the Layers panel, change the layer’s blend mode (in the pop-up menu at the top left) from Normal to Multiply, and this blends the paper image in with your main image. Now, lower the Opacity of this layer to around 80%.

OTHER OPTIONS: Here are a couple ways you can change or vary the look:

(1) Use a different paper texture. If you want a bunch of free paper textures—they are already out there—just do an Internet search for “paper textures,” and you’ll find links to hundreds of free, ready-to-go papers. A lot of them would work perfectly for this type of effect. Or, try this site, which offers 149 free paper textures: www.demilked.com/free-paper-textures-backgrounds/.

(2) Try different blend modes. Although we used the Multiply blend mode to get this look, each blend mode gives a different look and, depending on the image, you might find a blend mode that works better for your image than Multiply. Here’s a tip to quickly toggle through all the layer blend modes, so you can easily see each one (then you can just choose the one that looks best for your image): it’s the keyboard shortcut of Shift-+ (plus sign). Once you’ve clicked on the pop-up menu, press it each time you want to toggle through a different blend mode.

TECHNIQUE: We’re going to add a ton of contrast:

(1) In Camera Raw, click on the fourth icon from the left (at the top of the right side panels) to make the HSL/Grayscale panel visible, and then turn on the Convert to Grayscale checkbox to make this a black-and-white image. In Lightroom’s Develop module, just click on Black & White at the top right of the Basic panel.

(2) Let’s start by setting our white point and black point back in the Basic panel, so we get the widest possible range of contrast (if you have Photoshop CC, it can do this for you automatically—just Shift-double-click directly on the Whites slider, then on the Blacks slider, and it will automatically set both for you). Drag the Whites as far to the right as you can go without having a white triangle appear in the upper-right corner of the histogram, then back it off a bit. Then, drag the Blacks to the left until you see a solid white triangle in the top-left corner of the histogram, then back it off a tiny bit.

(3) Drag the Contrast slider to the right to add more contrast (I dragged it to +54 here) and drag the Clarity slider to the right to increase the midtone contrast (I went to +33). I also dragged the Highlights slider to the left until the sky didn’t look solid white.

OTHER OPTIONS: While I did this entire black-and-white conversion right in Camera Raw, almost every photographer I know that’s seriously into black and white uses a plug-in to do the conversion, and frankly, they all use the same plug-in (as do I—have been for years). It is the go-to tool for black and white like Photomatix is for HDR. Everybody uses it (and it’s worth the price of the entire suite to get it. Yes, it’s that good). It’s the Google Nik Collection’s Silver Efex Pro plug-in (for Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, or Apple Aperture). When you open it, it shows you a default black-and-white conversion and then a long list of thumbnails, each with a different conversion for you to choose from, emulating different darkroom processes and methods. Just click on the one you want and you’re done (although you can tweak any preset you’d like).

TECHNIQUE: You’re going to create a 32-bit (super-high-quality) HDR image:

(1) Select your bracketed images in Lightroom (or Bridge), then go under the Photo menu, under Edit In, and choose Merge to HDR Pro (in Bridge, it’s under Tools, under Photoshop). This opens the Merge to HDR Pro window. To create a 32-bit HDR file, choose 32-bit from the Mode pop-up menu near the top right. When you do that, you’ll see the options change to what you see above. There are no other settings changes you can make here, so click the Tone in ACR button at the bottom right (ACR stands for Adobe Camera Raw, and that’s where we’ll edit this 32-bit image).

(2) When the image opens in Camera Raw, enter the settings you see in the inset on the right above (basically, you’re going to add contrast, reduce the highlights, open up the shadows, and add clarity).

(3) When you’re done, click OK. Your image will open in Photoshop as a 32-bit image, but we’ll now need to convert it to a standard 8-bit image. So, go under the Image menu, under Mode, and chose 8 Bits/Channel. When it asks, click to Merge the layers, and then the HDR Toning dialog will appear. We don’t want to apply tonemapping (or it will look surreal), so from the Method pop-up menu (shown in the inset at the bottom), choose Exposure and Gamma and click OK, and your HDR image will keep its realistic look.

OTHER OPTIONS: While there are a number of other HDR software packages out there, including ones you can use without Photoshop, as plug-ins for Lightroom or Aperture, or as a standalone, the most popular one is Photomatix Pro from HDRsoft (and it does let you create 32-bit, high-quality, realistic HDR images). When you open your three (or more) bracketed images in Photomatix, you’ll choose some settings first and then, if you chose that option, see the Ghost Reduction dialog. Once you’re done there, your preview image appears and, in the Adjustments panel, you’ll click on Exposure Fusion at the top (rather than the default Tone Mapping) to create a realistic HDR look. I really don’t mess with any of the other controls here, although you might want to try the Method presets. I just click the Save and Re-Import or Apply button, and then I do the rest of my editing in Camera Raw (or Lightroom’s Develop module) using the same settings I show in the inset on the right side of the facing page.

TECHNIQUE: We darken the exposure, then tweak the White Balance sliders:

(1) To make the image look like it was taken much closer to sunset, we start by lowering the Exposure amount (dragging it to the left) so the image isn’t so bright. That helps a lot right there.

(2) To create the sunset colors you want, you use the Temperature and Tint sliders. If you look at the sliders themselves, behind them it shows a gradient and you just drag in the direction of the color you want. To get this look, I dragged the Temperature slider to the right a bit (toward yellow) and the Tint slider to the right quite a bit (toward magenta) for this color combination.

(3) Sometimes, dragging these sliders way over to one side or the other makes the white balance look too vibrant, but you can lower the Vibrance amount (drag the slider to the left) to fix that. I also added a little Clarity, which usually looks great on anything metal.

OTHER OPTIONS: While there are lots of plug-ins that add color effects, it’s so easy to do in Camera Raw or Lightroom (it’s just dragging either the Temperature or Tint sliders, or both, until it looks good to you), you don’t really need a plug-in.

TECHNIQUE: It looks like we’re using a plug-in, but it’s a built-in Photoshop filter called Iris Blur:

(1) Start in Photoshop by duplicating the Background layer. Then, go under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Iris Blur. That brings up the interface you see above, and it puts a big oval on your image with control points all the way around it.

(2) Click-and-drag one of the control points to resize the oval, and if you click inside it, you can drag it around the image to position it where you want it (I positioned it over the gondola). Then, if you put your cursor just outside one of the edge points, it will turn into a two-headed arrow, and you can click-and-drag to rotate the oval (as seen above). The four dots inside the oval control where the transition happens between in-focus and blurry, and you can click-and-drag them in and out. If you click on the round ring in the center and drag around it, it controls the amount of blur (or you can just drag the Blur slider in the Blur Tools panel). When you’re done, click OK. Since you applied this to a duplicate of the Background layer, now you can lower the layer’s opacity if you think the effect is too intense.

OTHER OPTIONS: Of course, if you don’t have Photoshop (and use either Lightroom, Elements, or Apple Aperture), there are plug-in or standalone options, like:

(1) OnOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite. It comes with a plug-in called Perfect Effects, which has a Lens Blur filter. That filter has a Round preset, which works very much like Photoshop’s Iris Blur, with the onscreen ovals for positioning, resizing, and such.

(2) The Google Nik Collection’s Color Efex Pro plug-in has a Vignette: Blur filter that does the same thing, and while you can choose the center of the blur area, the placement options are not quite as flexible as Photoshop’s built-in Iris Blur, but it still does a nice job.

TECHNIQUE: All we need is Camera Raw’s (or Lightroom’s) Adjustment Brush:

(1) In Camera Raw, click on the Adjustment Brush up in the toolbar along the top left of the window (in Lightroom’s Develop module, it’s above the right side Panels area). Now, click the + (plus sign) button to the right of the Exposure slider two times. This sets all the other sliders to zero and increases your Exposure amount to +1.00.

(2) For this particular picture, we’re just going to brighten (dodge) areas in the image so it looks like little pools of light are hitting those areas, but you can also darken (burn) any areas you feel are too bright (click the New radio button at the top of the tool’s options, and lower the Exposure setting). Scroll to the bottom of the tool’s options and turn off the Auto Mask checkbox.

(3) Then, take the brush and just click it once over any highlight areas that you want to be brighter, like you’re painting with light. I put arrows on the capture above so you could see where I clicked to make it look like light was hitting those areas. You usually only have to click once, but if it’s not bright enough, just click a second time.

OTHER OPTIONS: You can do this directly in Photoshop (or Elements) itself without using Camera Raw. Here’s how:

(1) Duplicate the Background layer and, in the Layers panel, change this duplicate layer’s blend mode (in the pop-up menu at the top left of the panel) from Normal to Screen. This makes the layer much brighter. Now, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel (it’s the third icon from the left), which puts a black mask over the brighter layer (so now everything looks normal again). Set your Foreground color to white, get the Brush tool, choose a medium-sized, soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker up in the Options Bar, and then click once over the areas you want to brighten (like we did with the Adjustment Brush on the facing page), and it reveals that lighter layer just where you clicked, so you get the same look.

TECHNIQUE: You’re going to convert to black and white, and then add a duotone look:

(1) In Camera Raw, start by clicking on the fourth icon over (at the top of the right side panels) to open the HSL/Grayscale panel. Turn on the checkbox for Convert to Gray-scale to make this a black-and-white image. In Lightroom’s Develop module, click on Black & White at the top right of the Basic panel.

(2) Now, go to the Split Toning panel (seen above). You’re only going to work with the Shadows set of sliders here (we’re not going to touch the Balance slider or the Highlights sliders). First, in the Shadows section, drag the Saturation slider over to 25 (as shown here) so you can see the color. Then, drag the Hue slider to the right to choose the color you want for your duotone tint (here, I wanted a brownish looking duotone, so I stopped at 30. The little gradient behind the slider shows you the range of colors available and where to drag to get different colors).

OTHER OPTIONS: There are a number of plug-ins (for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, or Apple Aperture) that have built-in duotone or tinting effects. In fact, I think it’s harder to find a plug-in that doesn’t have them. Here are the two I use most:

(1) OnOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite. It comes with a plug-in called Perfect Effects that has two filters that work well for duotone looks: Antique and Black & White. Scroll through those filters’ thumbnail previews and you’ll find one-click duotone looks.

(2) The Google Nik Collection’s Color Efex Pro plug-in has a Color Stylizer filter whose settings can be adjusted to create a duotone or sepia tone effect. Also, the Collection’s Silver Efex Pro plug-in, for creating black-and-white conversions, has some built-in duotone/sepia tone presets.