Stacey Bode Photography

Here’s a Photoshop trick that’s an oldie but goodie. You can make a “normal” image look as though it was taken with infrared film or an expensive infrared filter. I love Photoshop. I would totally slow dance with it if I could. Just a few quick adjustments and you’ve got a really cool effect. Here’s how ya do it…..

• With your image selected, open the Channel Mixer under the Adjustments menu
  
• Make sure the Output Channel is set to “gray”
• Set the RED channel to +100%, the GREEN channel to +200%, and the BLUE channel to -200%
• Make slight adjustments with the sliders to get the effect to your liking (I like lots of contrast)
  
• If your image ins’t flattened, go ahead and flatten the layers
• Under the Filters menu, select Distort, then Diffuse Glow
• Adjust the Glow Amount and Graininess with the sliders (maybe start with a Glow amount of 2 or 3 and see how that looks)
• That’s it!

I don’t use this effect for shots of people since it can make them look really weird, but it works great for pics of landscapes or even the venue. It works particularly well on a sunny day where light is hitting the trees or grass. You’ll get that “fluffy” infrared look that’s so neat. I hope some of you can have fun with this little bit of trickery! Here are a couple samples:

I thought it was about time to post another version of “before and after!”. I’m always talking to clients about how artistic digital editing is included in their packages, so I like to show examples of what the heck I’m talking about…and assure people that by “editing” I don’t actually mean “sit at my computer watching YouTube videos all day”.

As always, I will stress the importance of getting the exposure right in the camera. Then you can “enhance” the image instead of “fixing” it. I am by no means a Photoshop expert, but I’m happy to share some of the tricks I use to make happy shots a little happier.

For this first set, we were on the go, and I didn’t see on my histogram that I could have bumped up the exposure a tad. So, I brightened everything up a bit and added some sharpening. Easy to do, but adds a lot of impact to the final image.

For this next one, I wanted the bride to just glow and really stand out in the shot. So, I added some vignetting and made the hue of the green a little darker as well.

Since I had lots of ceremony shots that looked similar, I decided to give this next one a classic effect. First, I adjusted for the backlight by adding some fill light, slightly lowering the exposure, and bumping up the contrast using curves. Then, I ran an action preset to give it an antique tone.

For this next one, I wanted the flare to be more obvious, and the bride and groom to “pop” more in the image. I increased the contrast, added some vignetting, and saturated the colors in the flare.

When I do before/after posts, I always want to include one where the editing is really subtle. For this one, all I did was bump up contrast, balance skin tones to make them even more dreamy, sharpen, and crop a little to put the focus on the groom’s expression.

For this last one, I intentionally “over” exposed the image so that the main interest of the image (the people) wouldn’t be way under exposed. I knew that if I shot it like this, I could just play with the curves, vignette, and increase the black content to keep lighting on the people dramatic, while also emphasizing the shadows and flare. Since I was this far away, I couldn’t fill in with flash. If I had under exposed the people, it would have been more difficult to “fix” later.

I love looking at before/after pics of other photographers, so I’ll try to keep blogging some of mine occasionally. I’m happy to hear about any other tricks that folks might have, so if you want to share….let us know how you wave your magic editing wand.

I always talk to my clients about how all of their images are “digitally enhanced” or “artistically post-processed” or “subtle-ly awesomated”. I figured it was about time I explained what the heck that means.

First of all, I have to scream from the mountaintops that it’s really important to take a well-exposed, well-composed shot. Otherwise, all the fancy trickery won’t get you very far. With that said, there are some very minor tweaks and even some more extreme changes that can be done to take an image to the next level.

In the shot below, I did a little cropping and wanted the bride (the lovely Amanda) and her white dress to really stand out so I added a little omni light just around her.

I used a more “extreme” technique below. First I lightened the image a bit. Then, I decided to blur the background to put the emphasis on just the cake (instead of the dude hangin out in back). This is a technique I would only use occasionally since it’s a very “processed” kind of effect.

Here’s a pic of good ol’ Atlanta. Even though the before and after look really different, all I did was adjust the curves (contrast) and the color since it was a little hazy that night.

Here’s an example of subtle editing. All I did was add a little contrast and make the colors pop a bit more.

Here’s a shot of gorgeous Kelly that I altered to look more like an “aged” photo. I thought it just helped accentuate the mood of the moment.

So now hopefully folks will have an idea of what I’m talking about when go into my totally geeked-out photo speak.