Photoshop Lovin!

So, last weekend I was on my way to the grocery store (thats a duty I took over when Max came), when I passed by this food place called Biff Burgers (no joke). They were having some kind of mini car show with all kinds of old cars! I immediately aborted the mission, and ran home to get the gear (luckily, my wife is use to this).

I'm kind of apprehensive when it comes to walking around a busy place with a bunch of people with a camera and a tripod...so I really do not do it often...but these cars were frikking sweet, and the perfect candidate for this cool Photoshop plugin called Lucisart. The plugin is a bit pricey, and very confusing to use, but it's so frikking awesome once you find a rhythem and know which photos it works best on! Basically, it alters the lights and darks of a photo simultaneously, giving an HDR'ish appearance.

The one draw back of using this plugin, is the fact that it introduces what I like to call, "crap." Other photographers like to call it, "noise." I also will advise to not use this plugin on people....it makes them look sick...pale....and skin tone is one area I won't go just yet...people are sensitive.

The photo below was straight out of camera. It's not bad...it's just not like...wow!

After about 45 minutes in Photoshop, this is what I came out with. In my opinion, the trick is not slamming down a layer at 100% opacity and leaving it! I applied probably 20-25 layers at various opacities ranging from 20-60%, with an occasional levels and curves adjustment to compensate for the over exposure. After that, I spent a good while dodging and burning at 10% for midtones. The result was a fairly noisy image, so I ran a special little action that I found a while back that smooths everything out by painting.



Here are a few more I thought were kind of cool.

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So...while business is slow...go shoot something...shoot anything. The more you shoot, the more you learn. The make some crazy stuff in Photoshop. The more you use it, the faster you'll get!