Really loved the challenge posed by this photo from Heidi and it had a story to go with it. Heidi said:
“There is a story that goes along with these pics. I actually scratched my cornea during this shoot on a reedy weed. I had to go to the doctor today and have my pupil dialated and a bandage contact put in my left eye. But the pictures turned out beautiful. I just kept shooting. Didn’t realize how bad my eye hurt until I got home.”
Heidi sent me a few shots, but I loved the feel of this one. I really wish she had her eyes open that would have made it absolutely perfect for me! Initial thoughts were that the vignette was overdone and I’m quite impressed with how I managed to nix that vignette in a really raw and inventive way. So here’s the B&A and below is the post production recipe.
- First, I used MCP Actions‘ ‘Colour’ action from the ‘All in the Details’ actions set
- Then, I used MCP Actions’ FREE ‘Touch of Light/Touch of Darkness’ action to dodge (lighten) the corners of the photo where I felt the vignette was a bit extreme. I did this with a very low opacity brush. {this action is available for PSE btw}
- Next, I used the healing brush tool
on ‘replace’ mode
with a very soft edged brush (as soft as you can get it) to literally replace the darkened edges with grass from the middle of the photo. - Next, I used MCP’s ‘Magic Skin’ skin retouching action to retouch all of her skin with one click. I lowered the opacity because I thought the result was too extreme.
- I then used that free ‘Touch of Light’ action mentioned above to lighten under her eyes with an extremely low opacity, soft brush
- The last thing I did was apply Florabella’s new ‘Glam’ action from her new set called Luxe. I masked it all off of her skin and lowered the overall opacity down to 50%
THANKS, HEIDI! EVERYONE KEEP THOSE SHOTS COMIN. SEND YOUR PHOTOS TO EH@ELIZABETHHALFORD.COM
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