After-Before Friday Week 2

Posted on by Stacy P. Fischer

After-and-Before Friday Post HeaderHighlighting the creative magic behind post-processed photos

Week 2 of ABFriday highlights 5 pairs of photos from 5 photographers. Like to participate? Guidelines are here: After-Before Friday Forum.

My submission: Interior of the entrance hall, Louvre Museum, Paris
(For my other posts on the Louvre, visit Before & After: The Magic of Lightroom and Monochrome Processing Definitely a Challenge)

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Lightroom 5.4: 1. Applied my basic sharpening preset. 2. Warmed the white balance just a bit. 3. Reduced highlight clipping (-45) using the Highlights slider (I don’t use the Whites slider to decrease clipping as this can turn the whites gray). 4. Opened up the shadows (+67) to bring out the details, especially in the lower half of the photo. 5. Darkened the blacks (-12) just to the point of clipping to increase the tonal range. 6. Increased clarity (+43) to add more punch and midtone contrast and increased vibrance to brighten the dull colors (+25). 7. Increased detail in the lower half of the photo using an adjustment brush: brightened the highlights (+47), increased sharpness (+20), opened up the shadows (+61), and suppressed the resulting noise (+29). 8. Used the targeted adjustment tool in the HSL panel to selectively increase the saturation of the sky and the red banners. 9. Applied a post-crop (highlight priority) vignette.

Submitted by Robin Kent of photographybykent

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Robin says: This image of the US Air Force Memorial was taken just before in a light rain in April 2011. Although there was a heavy cloud cover, the statues in the foreground were extremely dark and I underexposed by one stop to get sufficient detail in the sky. The major change in post-processing was actually the cropping of the right side in order to exclude the Washington Monument. I darkened the grass in the foreground and lightened the statues of the soldiers. A detailed explanation can be found on my post.

Submitted by Jaime Perez of My Photolanguage

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Jaime says: The picture was taken in the Castillo de san Felipe de Barajas (San Felipe de Barajas Castle) in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The photo was processed using Photoshop CS3. [Visit Jaime’s post for the details.]

Submitted by Ben Whittard of Flights.Camera.Satisfaction

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In an April post, Ben featured the after image of this beautiful chandelier inside the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. I asked whether he had post-processed it, and if he had, suggested that it would be fun to see the original image. Not only is Ben showing us the before shot, he has put together a video showing his post-processing step-by-step. I might just have to “borrow” this idea from Ben for my next go-round (that is, if I can figure out how to do it)!

Submitted by Kayla Hill of Kayla Hill Photography

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Kayla says: The photo is from some engagement photos I took for a friend. I did my editing in Lightroom 5, and I also used the Topaz Retouch plug-in to play with the colouring a little.
[Visit Kayla’s post for the details.]

Please click on the links of those who contribute, to read their full posts and to like and/or comment on their respective photos or simply to see their other works – they’d love to have you visit! If they have not written a post, feel free to leave comments here for them, but pay them a visit as well.

So what do you think of the new ABFriday forum?
Feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section.
And don’t forget to view the guidelines if you want to participate. I’d love to have you aboard!

 

28 thoughts on “After-Before Friday Week 2”

  2. Hey stacy, what a great idea! We do some forums for newer photographers in our Photography Club to try to show how a small amount of tweaking can make a major difference. Your weekly post is a great tool for doing the same thing.

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    • Thanks, Tina. Seeing behind-the-scenes work of others is incredibly educational (and fun too). I’d love to find out more about your Photography Club. Is this an in-person club or do you run it online?

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        • Tina, your photoclub website is fantastic! So much helpful information. I found the before-and-after video and, for the life of me, can’t figure out how the photographer fixed the “bug bite” eye – wow 🙂 Hope you don’t mind if I “stop in” every now and again to peruse some more.

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        • Of course not! Feel free to stop by any time. It’s a great organization with something for everyone; we are very lucky! We don’t meet over the summer but start back up in Oct. EnjoyM

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  3. Fabulous job Stacy! Before, we had one half of an average picture; After, we have a two-parts fantastic photo. By gainning all those details and light in the lower part, give another dimension to the picture. Intriguing all what happens down there!

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  4. Pingback: ABFriday | My Photolanguage

      • Ooh, it hadn’t occurred to me, but it would be a good exercise. I’ll have to be organised and think through what I’m doing with my photos. Usually, I just head straight in instinctively and I certainly don’t do anything as sophisticated as you do.

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        • No need to be sophisticated 🙂 Usually there are a lot of steps that I take and then discard to reach the final version. I just look at the settings in my final image to see where I ended up. By using this method, I can go back to any of my post-processed photos and see what I did. Pretty easy!

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  6. Great post Stacy, you’ve got some nice shots there this week. Love the processing of your shot from the Louvre, the added vibrance makes all the difference! Thanks so much again for featuring my shot 🙂 I’m really hoping this series takes off as I think it’s such a fantastic idea. Regarding the video, I can give you some pointers of you use a Mac?

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    • Thanks, Ben! Yes, delighted about everyone’s great submissions 🙂 And you’re very welcome. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, too, that the idea catches on. Thanks for your offer of pointers – I saw that you use a Mac and I’m sad to say I don’t 😦 I’m sure, however, that google may be able to provide some answers. If I get stuck, I would imagine there are enough commonalities that you might be able to point me in the right direction!

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  7. OK, back again. I liked your images in part because I will be standing in that very spot in a few days, but more importantly because the changes you made had a great effect on the quality of the image. It was helpful to get the detailed info on the LR adjustments. I have a basic familiarity with LR, but have continued to rely on Photoshop while procrastinating on adding another major app to my toolbox. But your description enabled me to better understand how it can be used. I thought all of the other entries were excellent and it was great to see the variety of tools being used ranging from an early Photoshop version, a plugin or two, and Lightroom.

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    • Hey, Robin, so here’s another shot to add to your “requested” ones! I find LR more intuitive for the basic edits, and with the release of LR5, very powerful. I agree with you – I loved learning about everyone’s workflow in the programs used. And with plug-ins oftentimes having a free trial period, some experimenting just might be in order 🙂

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Any thoughts?