One of the questions that I am asked by other photographers quite frequently is how I edit my photographs.  Do I spend hours in Photoshop?  Am I using another program?  How am I processing my photographs to achieve a consistent look/feel?

For me, it is a two-step process.  The first involves Adobe Lightroom- this is where I do all of my initial editing, color correcting, and image prepping.  The majority of my photographs will be edited in Lightroom AND NOTHING ELSE.

The second step involved Adobe Photoshop- if I really like a photograph and I feel that it would benefit from some additional work (vintage overlays, textures, dodging and burning, selective rather than global color enhancement), I will take it into Photoshop.  Only about 30 photographs per wedding reach this stage, because this is where I really take the time to play and make an image look like I remember it feeling.  I’m not necessarily a realist when it comes to these photographs- sometimes a photograph will look little like I remember the moment feeling- I use Photoshop to try to bridge that gap, whether I remember a darker moment, a warmer light, or even a grungier feel.

As is the case with every photographer, my time is very precious to me.  So, in order to streamline my workflow, I have harnessed two of the greatest time-savers in Lightroom and Photoshop- I have created user-specific presets and actions.  What do I mean by that?  Well, over the past several years of using Lightroom and Photoshop together, I realized that I treat certain types of photographs in very specific ways.  If it is a bright sunny day then I might brighten and enhance the sky.  If we are in flat light, I might brighten the skin tones.  I might add some warming textures to grass and foliage in the summer to give it a deeper, richer look.  Rather than go into detail about action and preset creation here (there are tutorials all over the web), I thought I might give some visual examples of what can be accomplished in just a few seconds with each program.  Remember, most of the time I am going for subtle enhancements rather than over-the-top changes.  (I am going to use images from Chris and Amber’s session- they are expecting their first child soon!)

In this first example, I wanted to enhance the sky, grass, and water.  In Lightroom I ran a preset to brighten the skin tones (by lightening the reds and yellows in the photograph), while darkening and saturating the blues and cyans.  I also added a touch of clarify and vibrance.  My preset also includes a touch of fill and brightness- I want to get the image close to how I like my finished product to look so that I can spend less time in Photoshop and also deliver many images directly from Lightroom.  Once I brought the image into Photoshop, I ran an action I developed to run a selective color enhancement, which I painted into the sky and the grass.  I also separated the shadow areas a bit with some custom shadow/highlight settings.  And voila- 30 seconds later I have an image that I’m happy with, that isn’t too over the top.

When I took this second photograph, I needed to expose for the highlights in order to preserve the background.  This was an incredibly bright day, and I didn’t want to blow out the water or the couple, but I also wanted to retain a soft, natural light feel.  In Lightroom I ran one of my presets to enhance and brighten the greens while separating out the shadows and brightening the skin (I brightened the yellows and reds and dropped the saturation while brightening and shifting the hue of the greens).  In photoshop I wanted give the photograph a more three dimensional feel while separating the couple from the background and enhancing the foreground.  To do so, I ran one of my dodge and burn actions (using curve adjustment layers, NOT the dodge and burn tool), and then followed it up with a texture that I photographed last year (that is one of my favorites) on soft light, painted out of the couples face.  With actions, this was a 40 second fix.

This third set is a good example of the straight out of camera file not looking like I remember the moment feeling.  Autumn and Chris were cuddling together in the bright sun, and we were talking about their baby (did I mention that they are expecting!!! yay!!).  I remembered the moment being very bright and warm. In Lightroom I ran one of my presets to enhance the sky and brighten the skin (as in the first example.  I also ran a preset that added a very subtle vignette and opened up the shadows.  Then I brought the image into Photoshop and added a cream fill layer on multiply to give the image a vintage feel, while running an action to separate the shadows a bit more and adding a texture overlay (locally applied, not globally applied).   Once again, actions helped to keep the retouching under a minute.

Post by Michelle Turner, Maine Portait Photographer and Maine Wedding Photographer

Tags: Maine Portrait Photography, Maine Portrait Photographer, Maine Portrait Photography, Photoshop Actions, Lightroom Presets