A simple way to add zing to your portraits

I took this shot of Emily at the weekend using window light and a collapsible background - an impromptu shot with no fussing over set-up. She's got a lovely expression and the skin tones are natural - perfectly acceptable. However, as I didn't bother to light the background separately it is rather muted.

A couple of minutes in Lightroom and Photoshop though and you can make the shot a lot more vibrant. I used the brightness control in Lightroom (this protects highlights unlike the exposure control) to give a modern high-key look to Emily and then split-toned the image, introducing a gold hue into the highlights. I then exported to Photoshop and made a crude selection of the face which I then inverted. I used the 'replace color' command to select only the background and then lightened this (if I hadn't deselected Emily's face, areas here would have lightened as well). I then added a white stroke and black border (a process I have stored as an action). Very simple but gives the portrait a very different feel.

Check out more of my photography here: Kent portrait photographer

Colour touch

Colour touch (also known as spot colouring or colour pop) is a technique used to emphasise elements in the frame by leaving them coloured while desaturating the rest. Like all 'special-effects' I think it should be used in moderation. It is a crowd-pleaser though, so worth having in your arsenal of photographic techniques. When I design albums for clients everybody wants one of these included.

The only challenging aspect to the technique is to make an accurate selection in Photoshop. I strongly recommend you read chapter 1 of Steve Caplin's 'How to Cheat in Photoshop' entitled 'Natural Selection'. This will familiarise you with the lasso, magic wand, quick masks, quick selection tool, pen tool and refining edges - all key skills to have for image manipulation. When making a selection I generally use a combination of these tools.

If you just want to do a rough-and-ready treatment though:

1. Make a copy of your image in a new layer.

2. With this layer active go to Layer-New Adjustment Layer-Hue/Saturation and drag the saturation slider to -100.

3. Click on the layer mask icon (the white canvas icon adjacent to the adjustment icon).

4. Select the paint brush tool.

5. Painting with black will allow the coloured original layer to show through.

6. If you make a mistake, press X to paint with white and return to mono.

Enjoy!

Check out my albums page to see further examples: Kent wedding albums

A great guide to Photoshop

If I were learning to use Photoshop again, this book would be at the top of my benefit-of-hindsight reading list. It's very well written, very clearly explained (this is quite unusual for a Photoshop-related book), is broken into nice bite-sized chunks and contains lots of inspiring examples for the reader to have a go at - essential for learning how to use Photoshop. I learnt by using the video articles featured in magazines such as Digital Camera and Digital Photo - they're OK, but have such a difficult task in trying to make it accessible to newbies without making it too tedious for those with a bit more experience (and probably end up satisfying neither).

I intend to post more on Photoshop and Lightroom. For now, all I'll say is that photo-editing software is essential if you own a digital camera. Don't allow the camera to tweak for you (my Canon EOS 5D is able to sharpen, saturate colours, increase contrast etc with its Digic processor) but learn to do it yourself, and take full control of your photography. It's much more satisfying.

Check out more of my photography here: Kent photographer

Photoshop Actions for Wedding Photography

Just purchased Jeff Ascough (one of the world's most highly regarded wedding photographers) Photoshop Actions II. These install into Photoshop and allow you to run his treatments on your own shots. Initial impressions are very favourable. The actions are elegant, customisable and the finished photos look terrific. The above shot (from Donna and Paul's wedding in Hythe) was treated using a process called 'Silk Stocking' - a digital version of a traditional black-and-white printing technique which bleeds the shadows into the highlights. The actions are easily set-up for batch processing allow hundreds of photos to be processed at a time - fantastic!

Digital trickery with Photoshop

I decided to add an 'About me' page to my main website yesterday (Kent wedding photographer profile) and thought I'd include a quirky family shot, hopefully demonstrating creativity, humour and Photoshop skills in the process. The shot above took only ten minutes to put together. The three separate photos were placed in layers and then the shots of my wife and I were reshaped using Edit - Transform - Distort. Very simple when you know how!

Adding a professional touch

A very easy way to give a professional touch to your photographs is to add a stroke line and border - as in the photograph above (taken in Trinidad, Cuba). In Photoshop this is accomplished by Edit - Select All, Edit - Stroke (choose colour and thickness, then set location to inside) and then Image - Canvas size (click relative and then specify the width of the border). Very simple. Check out some examples of this technique on my Kent portrait photography page.