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How to achieve this portrait effect?


indigo27

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Hello everybody

Can anyone tell me how I can create portraits like this? I think the camera settings are very important but this picture has been edited a lot. Anyone know how I can achieve images like that with photoshop?

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
David

007-portraits-genevieve-caron.jpg
 

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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that looks like Topaz Detail to me
 

Tom Mann

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It's less the camera settings or plugins than the lighting. This is little more than classic, good studio photography.

From the shape and position of the catchlights in his eyes as well as the lack of shadows on the background + controlled shadows on his face, my guess is that the photographer used traditional clamshell lighting: most likely, a medium beauty dish directly above the camera, and some sort of fill under the camera. The fill could be a softbox, a strip-light, or even just a silver reflector laying flat just out of the picture, below his torso. From the shape of the catchlight on his irises, my money would be riding on a strip light for fill.

Obviously, the background was flooded uniformly with light to bring it up to a nice light gray.

While Topaz Detail might have been used to bring up some details (as the name suggests), and I can't rule it out, IMHO, that was a very minor factor in achieving the overall look.

Tom M
 

indigo27

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Here's a diagram for clamshell lighting: http://www.stefantell.se/blog/2010/03/actress-headshot-studio-lighting-diagram/

BTW, don't be misled by the darker background and lower contrast on the face of the model in the above link. It's very easy to adjust both by adjusting the output of the lights on the background, and using the right size beauty dish, control unwanted spill bouncing around the studio, etc.

T
Oh wow. Thanks for the great answers guys. Already learned some new stuff.

So basically the lightning is very important in order to get a shot like that. But still it seems to me that a lot of editing was involved (colors especially). Is it possible to say what has been done in photoshop?

Thanks again for the fast and very informative replies. It's great to have a board like that!

David
 

Tom Mann

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OP: "...But still it seems to me that a lot of editing was involved (colors especially). Is it possible to say what has been done in Photoshop?..."

In my experience, the lighting is absolutely the foundation of photos like this. If the lighting is right, one can obtain colors like this by doing no more than pushing a couple of sliders around in ACR, hardly what I would call extensive photoshopping.

Once the overall exposure, contrast, general level of saturation, and a neutral white is established in ACR, my guess is that a moderate reduction of the yellow saturation in ACR (...and maybe increasing it's luminosity slightly) is about all that is needed to get SOOC (straight-out-of-the-camera) photo to look like this.

Tom M
 

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