Highlighting the creative magic behind post-processed photos

It’s Week 12 of ABFriday! Many thanks to all who have submitted their work this week, as well as to all who have supported this Forum over the past three months — your willingness to share your post-processing knowledge has been wonderful! For those thinking about participating, jump in. We’d love to have you! Guidelines are on the After-Before Friday Forum page. NOTE: For those viewing the post in the Reader, if the slideshows don’t load, please visit the original post.

My submission: This week, I’m highlighting the use of two Selective Editing tools in Lightroom 5: the radial filter and the adjustment brush. I use the radial filter to isolate the horse’s head, darkening the exposure of the rest of the image. With the adjustment brush, I use one to sharpen and highlight the horse’s head; I use a second to create a shallow depth of field on a good portion of the image.

I’d be interested to hear any thoughts, either on the photo itself or on the tutorial. Also, if there’s anything you’d like me to focus on in an upcoming tutorial, I’d be happy to try to oblige!

I’ve also included the after and before images.

Leaves (After), by Stacy Fischer, Visual Venturing

Leaves (Before), by Stacy Fischer, Visual Venturing

Submitted by Robin Kent — PhotographybyKent

Eiffel Tower (After), by Robin Kent, PhotographybyKent

Eiffel Tower (Before), by Robin Kent, PhotographybyKent

Robin says: This week’s submission to Stacy’s After-Before Friday Forum is from a recent trip to Paris (which is pretty obvious when one looks at the image). I am often shooting cityscapes during twilight and one of the challenges in these circumstances is exposing for extremely bright lights scattered across an otherwise very dark scene. Such was the case with this twilight image of the Eiffel Tower. The problems are not so apparent when looking at the images in their small sizes here, but on a print 24 inches-plus, a string of blazing street lamps can be a little obnoxious. My go-to tool (until I can find something better) for reducing the glare is the “Highlights” slider in Adobe Camera Raw. The “After” image is actually a Photomerge with one other image, which explains the slightly wider field of view. But both received the same treatment. For those interested in the step-by-step process, please visit my post here. And once again, many thanks to Stacy for keeping this forum running and to the other participants for their contributions. It seems that each week I learn several new things that are very helpful.

Submitted by Loré Dombaj — Snow’s Fissures and Fractures

(After) Loré Dombaj, Snow’s Fissures and Fractures

(Before) Loré Dombaj, Snow’s Fissures and Fractures

Loré says: As promised, I went a different route this week. I stumbled on a sweet little free program called FotoSketcher and used it to convert a regular photo into an oil painting look-a-like. It is a very simple and easy to use program, where you can choose to convert your image to pencil sketch, watercolor painting, oil painting… The original photo was taken with my old HTC phone and nothing was changed. I just uploaded it into FotoSketcher and chose “painting – oil”, “hard texutre” and added a frame.

For more details (and gasp) even few screenshots, check my blog.

Submitted by Jaime Perez — My Photolanguage

(After), Jaime Perez, My Photolanguage

(Before), Jaime Perez, My Photolanguage

Jaime says: This time, more of the basic edition steps just “to make it quite clear”!

Submitted by Leanne Cole — Leanne Cole PHOTOGRAPHY

Leanne Cole participated in ABFriday Week 10, and one of her post-processing choices was replacing the sky in her “after” photo. Not knowing how she accomplished this, I, of course, asked. Not only did Leanne answer, but she put together a post with a video of her process and she was more than willing for me to include the link to the video in this week’s Forum. Thanks, Leanne!

Submitted by Benjamin Rowe — aperture64

Cricket (After), Benjamin Rowe, Aperture64

Cricket (Before), Benjamin Rowe, Aperture64

Ben says: This week I am editing a macro shot of a small cricket, using a mixture of Lightroom and Photoshop.

 Please click on the links of those who contributed this week, to read about their post-processing steps and/or to see what other treasures they have on their blogs. They’d love to have you visit!

So what do you think of the 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 onboard!