I've seen various comments over the past few months about a before/after thread. Well here it is. ? Anyone is welcome to share their own before/afters, and try to explain what you did. It doesn't have to include every layer or LR tweak, but just a general rundown as to your thought process.
Mine is several parts, before, during, and after. I needed a spider image for my photo of the day. As some of you know, I am part of a monthly diptych loop, where we each send a photo to someone else, and the second person shoots an image to be paired, inspired by the original photo. The image sent to me was of a stack of books on a stool, very minimal, but the title that was readable on one of the book spines was "Spiders of the World." So I set out to find a spider.
I did find several in my back yard, but they were all very small. I originally had my Lensbaby Velvet 85 on my camera, and while it is a macro lens, it is only a 1:2 representation. The spider was just too small in the frame to be a meaningful subject, so I quickly switched over to my actual 105mm macro lens, as seen below.
At this point the spider is much better subject to background ratio, and I liked the light coming from behind it, but I felt that the web wasn't prominent enough, and that working in post the colors would go wonky if I upped contrast too much. So I went back inside and got my water bottle and then sprayed the web. Much better!
Then some light editing in LR. I have my own import preset where I set contrast, change the sliders in the Highlights, Shadows, Blacks, & Whites that somewhat replicates my camera back. I also tweak texture and clarity and often add a vignette with a radial filter. On this one I also added a bit of a faux sunbeam/warm glow upper left because there was a hint of it in the SOOC and I thought that a solid green background was too boring.
Then I take almost all my images into Photoshop and finish them off with a lightshaping overlay and also a custom curves layer for some color toning.
I would have loved if I'd thought to take the spray bottle out before spider hunting becasue I like the shape of the web in the original one but in the end I am pleased with my final result. This is where it helps to have a vision of what you want before you even set out to shoot. ?
I would love to see others of you share also!
ETA: This can also be a behind the scenes or planning the image kind of share also, not necessarily strictly post processing. ? My images are sort of a hybrid.
Mine is several parts, before, during, and after. I needed a spider image for my photo of the day. As some of you know, I am part of a monthly diptych loop, where we each send a photo to someone else, and the second person shoots an image to be paired, inspired by the original photo. The image sent to me was of a stack of books on a stool, very minimal, but the title that was readable on one of the book spines was "Spiders of the World." So I set out to find a spider.
I did find several in my back yard, but they were all very small. I originally had my Lensbaby Velvet 85 on my camera, and while it is a macro lens, it is only a 1:2 representation. The spider was just too small in the frame to be a meaningful subject, so I quickly switched over to my actual 105mm macro lens, as seen below.
At this point the spider is much better subject to background ratio, and I liked the light coming from behind it, but I felt that the web wasn't prominent enough, and that working in post the colors would go wonky if I upped contrast too much. So I went back inside and got my water bottle and then sprayed the web. Much better!
Then some light editing in LR. I have my own import preset where I set contrast, change the sliders in the Highlights, Shadows, Blacks, & Whites that somewhat replicates my camera back. I also tweak texture and clarity and often add a vignette with a radial filter. On this one I also added a bit of a faux sunbeam/warm glow upper left because there was a hint of it in the SOOC and I thought that a solid green background was too boring.
Then I take almost all my images into Photoshop and finish them off with a lightshaping overlay and also a custom curves layer for some color toning.
I would have loved if I'd thought to take the spray bottle out before spider hunting becasue I like the shape of the web in the original one but in the end I am pleased with my final result. This is where it helps to have a vision of what you want before you even set out to shoot. ?
I would love to see others of you share also!
ETA: This can also be a behind the scenes or planning the image kind of share also, not necessarily strictly post processing. ? My images are sort of a hybrid.
Last edited: