Highlighting the creative magic behind post-processed photos
Only 5 days left to choose the one photo you would like to see post-processed by 11 different photographers. Visit ABFriday Week 23 for all the details, photos, and poll, and then check back next Friday to find out which one was chosen!
For today’s post, we welcome another photographer to the Forum — Shane Francescut of The Weekly Minute. If you wish to join in, guidelines are on the After-Before Friday Forum page. As always, thanks to all for this week’s wonderful after-before galleries!
My submission: Last week, I traveled to San Francisco where, with the help of a wonderful guide and his 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, I captured this shot of The Palace of Fine Arts (15mm, 8 sec at F/11, ISO 200, 6:22am). You’ll be seeing many more photos from my sunset and sunrise shoots in the weeks to come, but in the spirit of the season, I chose this photo with its Halloween “glow” for today’s Forum.
Update 03 Nov 2014
In response to Loré’s comment that she preferred the darker original image, I revisited my original post-processing choices. With a fresh set of eyes, I realized I had done two things to the original photo that made it a weaker “after” image: (1) I cropped it to center the Palace, and (2) I changed to a cooler white balance. I reverted to the image size and warmer white balance of the original image, and yes, I did decrease the exposure just a bit from my first “after” image. Thanks, Loré, for being honest and speaking up. You helped me end up with an image I am much happier with – I hope you like it better too!
Submitted by Robin Kent — PhotographybyKent
Robin says: This week, I thought I would go back in time and pull out an image taken with my first digital camera, a Nikon D70, about two months after I had purchased it. The subject is a classic location: Mont Saint-Michel on the Normandy coast in France. This image was essentially a reject; until this week, it had remained untouched since it was downloaded to my hard drive in July 2004. Moreover, it is in JPEG format. Back then, I thought RAW only signified something uncooked. The “Before” image here is the unretouched original. The “After” image was processed in Photoshop using only the Camera Raw Filter. Details on the processing can be found at my post here.
Submitted by Shane Francescut — The Weekly Minute
Shane says: This image was taken while practising a two-light lighting setup in my home office. The aim was to create a soft but slightly dramatic look using one softbox on me, and one bare flash on the background to help create some separation between me and the background. I then processed the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom 5.
Visit Shane’s post to read about his post-processing.
Submitted by Loré Dombaj — Snow’s Fissures and Fractures
Loré says: Just a simple exercise for this week. I wanted to see how close I could get to accentuate some details. So, basically I was going to crop till I drop. I love how this turned out, my crazy dog in my face. Or the other way around. I was dangling a dog treat with one hand while shooting with the other, hence the awkward angle.
Submitted by Katie Prior — Drawing with Light
Katie says: This week, I have chosen an image that I took in Leeds city centre earlier in the year. In Leeds there are many beautiful, old buildings, this is the top one of the department stores. However, unless you climb to the top of the opposite building and hang out the window (I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed!) the photo has to be taken from the ground and unless you have a tilt-shift lens, the image you get will have converging verticals and seem compressed and totally out of proportion. This is often used to great effect, but with this old clocktower, it just didn’t seem right. Before totally dismissing the shot as trash, I thought I’d experiment with the lens adjustments in Lightroom.
Submitted by Cee Neuner — Cee’s Photography
Visit Cee’s post for her post-processing tips.
Submitted by Janice Meyers Foreman — jmeyersforeman photography
Visit Janice’s post for her post-processing tips.
Submitted by Benjamin Rowe — aperture64
Ben says: This week I have tried to create a spooky image of a forest, I will let you decide if I succeeded.
Submitted by Manal Ali — A Single Shutter
Manal says: This photograph was taken at Bamburi Beach in Mombasa. It was initially raining the entire morning so a trip to the beach seemed out of the cards, but then there was a reprieve for a while which meant a trip was possible. I used a monochrome edit because I was trying to reflect the rolling clouds in the sky and somber tones.
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!
Visual Venturing 
Awesome challenge. I really like the work you did on your photo and what Shane did to his. If I remember, I’ll join in on this challenge.
LikeLike
Check back this Friday – 11 of us are post-processing the same photo (check out week 23 for the details, if you’re interested) — it’s the 6-month anniversary post 🙂 And we’d love to have you, whenever you’re able!
LikeLike
Ok, I know everyone will say – Here she goes again. The after image has so much more detail, but I simply adore your before work. I don’t know what is it with me and darker images, like I am the resident of Gotham.
LikeLike
Loré, you just made me laugh out loud with the Gotham thing 😀 Hey, to each his own, right? I’ll have to go back and look at it again with fresh eyes and a new perspective. I’ll let you know if I end up agreeing with you 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Okay, Loré, take a look at the update to the post – I think (I hope) you’ll like it 🙂
LikeLike
Yes, this is much closer to my taste. Again, I like the details of the first “after” image, but this second has more character. All in all, high quality image of a very beautiful place. I love when I get a feedback, weeks ago I revisited my yellow roses image when many of you said you found it too dark. I think that is the point of this Forum.
Thank you for doing an amazing job week after week. (Ok, enough with the sucking up :D)
LikeLike
Hi Stacy, great work on the video. I am fairly new to Lightroom, would it be better to do all your adjustments, before taking it into photoshop to use the healing tool?
LikeLike
Thanks, Janice. Your question is an excellent question, one I wish I had an intelligent response to. Usually, I do as you suggest, bringing the image into Photoshop after I have done everything I can do with the image in Lightroom. Truthfully, I don’t know why I deviated here; I guess the grasses were just too much of a distraction for me to leave to the end. 😉 I wonder if my final image would have turned out any differently had I followed my usual pattern. I may just have to give that a try for fun 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love this!!
LikeLike
Hi, Katie! So glad you do 🙂 Thanks for the visit!
LikeLike
Gorgeous photo Stacy, thanks again for some new tips in Lightroom which I will endeavour to use. I love the spot tool in PS which seems a lot better than the one in Lightroom on this occasion. I didn’t realise you can go between the two so a new tool to practice with now. Thanks again 🙂
LikeLike
Hi, Karen. I’m definitely glad you’ve found something new in this week’s video 🙂 And, yes, it’s great to be able to go seamlessly between LR and PS! Helps with those bigger edits that sometimes are needed. Thanks, as always, for commenting, my friend!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your welcome muchly 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
A little trick with the healing tool in Lightroom is that you can drag it and it then works similar (not exactly the same) as the spot healing tool as it will still source another area of the image. I have used it on power lines in the past.
LikeLike
Hi, Ben. Thanks for pointing that out. I have used that technique but sometimes I just need to pull out the bigger guns 😉
LikeLike
It’s fun to see what others are trying. I’m glad they share and give some commentary in their blogs as well.
Nancy
LikeLike
Nancy, thanks so much for taking the time to visit the ABFriday forum and for your comment! I’m delighted to hear you like what you see, both here and on the blogs of the participants. It’s a fun group and we welcome all to join us 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your Palace of Fine Arts is just gorgeous. I like everyone’s work this week.
LikeLike
Thanks, Cee! Me too 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing,, Stacy! I’m learning the editing every week from you, but I don’t have the Photoshop yet. 🙂
LikeLike
Hi, Amy! I tried using the spot removal tool in Lightroom, just to see how it performed, but it didn’t come close to the PS spot healing brush. But the LR tool can work well – it just depends on what you are asking it to do. So make sure to give it a try should you need to do some type of cleanup on a photo. You may be presently surprised 🙂 Thanks so much for watching!
LikeLike
I agree, the remove feature of LR is not good at all. I rarely use it. Photoshop is very effective. I’ll consider it seriously. 🙂 Thank you for the video, Stacy!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The lightroom spot removal tool does have it’s limitations but since that’s all I have, I try to work with it! Love the group that submitted this week and I’m really pissed that time ran out for me to get something submitted. I was thinking you weren’t having ABFriday until your anniversary. So is there going to be one next week? Or just the reveal?
LikeLike
Hi, Emilio. Having seen your images, I was bummed time ran short for you as well. This Friday is the reveal only, next Friday is all the afters, so it isn’t until Nov. 21 (Week #27) that we’re back to normal. Can you wait that long?? I hope so!
LikeLike