It is quite amazing to see how you dictate your vision....endless possibilities and choices of simply changing a simple view of how you edit your image. This particular thought was about how light can effect an image and mood. This natural light image was a (Behind the Scenes) photo whilst I was assisting a photographer late 2013. Quite amazing to see the change of direction of where it came from.
IMAGE SPECIFIC INFORMATION:
Camera - Canon 1D-x with a 24-70mm F2.8 Lens
Exposure - 35mm at F4, 1/125th of a second.
PHOTOSHOP PROCESSING/WORKFLOW
Original Image
The Original image was opened in Photoshop and I generated a variety of Zone Masks to see the luminosity of each zone mask/channel*. This is ultimately to create the appropriate channels and determine the overall tonal values and range for the image.
Zone 10 - The darkest possible zone of highlight information. Very little detail in the eyes or the right side of the face.
Zone 9 - Slightly lighter then Zone 10, however starting to have more detail in the skin.
Zone 8 - Lighter then both Zone 9 and 10, ability to see more detail within the eyes.
Zones 8, 9 and 10 were selectively masked with each other to bring out the appropriate amount of light. Ability to merge each layer
I used the healing brush to clean up any minor blemishes or imperfections to the image.
Some minor Dodge and Burning to remove the unwanted bumps and scratches on the forehead, and reduce the light inconsistencies that are present on the face.
Removal of the earphones using the clone brush.
Skin adjustment using an Inverted High Pass Adjustment to reduce the transitions of light on the skin.
More dodging and burning was required to even out the subtleties to the skin.
Dodged the upper and lower lips and eyes. Selectively masked in some hair detail
I refined the dodging and burning to create shape (a 3-dimensionsal structure to the face).
Adding more highlights and shadows to the face, opening up the eyes and refining the light fall off.
Final Dodge and Burn to clean up the image.
Final tweaks to the image included adding Mid-tone Clarity adjustment using (Adobe Camera Raw) detail to the image only targeted to the Mid-tones and Sharpening targeted to highlights only using blend-if. For this particular image I used the 'sharpening details' function from within Facebook Powertools Photoshop extension.
*Please not this is only available for users of Photoshop CC and higher. I also added noise to the image.
