Randy Kepple Photographs Blog

Dennis…glad you like that image! That particular image was actually pretty straightforward. Part of what I was trying to say about getting it right “in camera”. I started by setting up my RAW file conversion in Lightroom to give me all the detail that I wanted in the image. Make sure I had good shadow detail and that I retained detail information in my highlights. I’m kind of old school that way. It was the way I was trained to shoot and process my images.

When I brought the image into Photoshop, the first thing I did was a curves adjustment. This snaps in my color and gives me a slight contrast boost. The final contrast adjustments will come later. The next thing I did was retouch any blemishes on their faces and any skin that was showing. Then I used a wonderful plug-in for Photoshop called Portraiture to smooth out the skin without removing the details, such as pores. We don’t want a bride and groom who look like they are barbie dolls!

Once the skin is finished, I usually go back one step in the history palette and set my history brush to sample from the portraiture step that just finished. Setting the history brush opacity to 60%, I start to paint in the retouched skin until I’m happy with the way it looks. The next step is to use the Warp tool and Liquify to shape and correct things in the image. In this particular image, one of the things I did (at the request of the bride) was to reduce the size of her arm facing the camera. This is an easy thing to do and the groom had a little double chin action going since he as looking down at the bride.

Next, to boost the color and contrast a bit, I used one of my custom actions called Urban Color. This increases the saturation without distorting the color tones. I selectively painted this in using layer masks. Next is one of my favorite TRA actions, Oh Snap!, which adds a nice final boost of contrast. I usually create a layer mask for the Oh Snap! layer group and paint it in as well. It’s a great action, but nothing is as simple as pushing a button. I always season to taste! I think that’s important to note.

The final step is to size the image (in this case, it was a 20×30 wall canvas) and sharpen AFTER sizing. Sharpening is always the final step as you should sharpen your print for the media. I sharpen web images differently than wall prints. TRA has a wonderful set of sharpening actions in the TRA set. I also use Nik Sharpener Pro. The new Smart Sharpen in Photoshop is a wonderful tool as you can adjust the sharpening differently for highlights AND shadows. Independent of each other. A very nice tool that’s relatively new to the Photoshop suite of tools.

Hope that helps!