post processing for weddings/portraits

[Kimbalina81]

Hi,

For those of you who do weddings and other types of portraiture- what types of post-process editing do you do? What types of editing do you find to be popular with your clients? I just finished up shooting the wedding and am focusing mainly on upping the contrast and saturation in the pics as needed, and I'm finding that I'm pretty satisfied with simply these actions, but I'd also like to play around with some different actions, etc. in photoshop, just see what kind of effects I can get. Any suggestions would be great!

Thanks,

K

 

[MTVision]

Hi,

For those of you who do weddings and other types of portraiture- what types of post-process editing do you do? What types of editing do you find to be popular with your clients? I just finished up shooting the wedding and am focusing mainly on upping the contrast and saturation in the pics as needed, and I'm finding that I'm pretty satisfied with simply these actions, but I'd also like to play around with some different actions, etc. in photoshop, just see what kind of effects I can get. Any suggestions would be great!

Thanks,

K

I wouldn't up the saturation too much - it's usually not a great look for photos. Vibrance would probably work better. Contrast can do some funky things to skin tones if you aren't careful.

Do you mean actions like ones you can buy/download for free? If so, It's better to learn how to do it all on your own versus using actions created by someone else.

For portraits I usually just do a clean edit on them and sometimes I'll do a couple black and white conversions if the photo seems right for it. I, personally, would stick with keeping it simple for a wedding.

 

[KmH]

Once I have culled and organized my images my typical workflow entails first setting the white balance in ACR and doing basic edits like removing skin blemishes, brightening eyes and maybe adding a vignette. The bottom line at this point is that each image is custom edited, though I can often use batch mode to set the white balance ans other common settings on groups of image shot in the same lighting.

Then it's off to CS5 for the heavy lifting like setting the white and black points, skin softening, local sharpening, cropping, and what ever else is needed, or that I want in each image.

As I work I sort the images for final processing, like conversion to B&W (duotone. tritone, quadtone), or some other special treatment like adding textures, text, or running some of the many actions or scripts I have written.

 

[Kimbalina81]

Thanks to both of you- great tips! I'm currently using a program (not sure of the name, but I think it came free with the Canon Rebel I'm using) that doesn't have the vibrance slider- although vibrance sounds like it would work much better than the saturation slider. Can you recommend any good programs that work well for editing and converting RAW images?

 

[Kimbalina81]

P.S. Meant to also say any good "free" programs that are downloadable?

 

[MTVision]

P.S. Meant to also say any good "free" programs that are downloadable?

GIMP is suppose to be really good and similar in ways to photoshop. It's free and downloadable.

 

[Kimbalina81]

Can you convert from RAW to JPEG in GIMP?

 

[MTVision]

Yeah. I think it might be a plug in for GIMP. I don't use it but a few people on here do. Do a google search for it and you'll find it.

 

[MTVision]

I looked it up - there is one called UFRAW. It lets your process your RAW files - I wouldn't just convert them to JPEG.

 

[DiskoJoe]

the final look is something that you and the client should have discussed prior to the wedding/shoot. Did you show them any of your work as examples of your style?

 

[DiskoJoe]

Can you convert from RAW to JPEG in GIMP?

You should go invest in photoshop if you are going to charge for your work.

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

Can you convert from RAW to JPEG in GIMP?

You should go invest in photoshop if you are going to charge for your work.

+1

 

[raider]

not very professional - especially if you're charging. also, by looking for free stuff, i would gather you're not registered/paying taxes - jail time. there may be a prisoner discount for photoshop.