Direction.Needed.Please.

For those that have been following my Flickr stream for any length of time know, I am all over the place in my style.  I’ll spend months doing nothing but sunsets, then move onto macro shots, then do some time in portraits or trying to learn strobes.  Also, I tend to play all the time with post-processing.  Sometimes keeping the shots as true to color as possible – other times going from a simple cross-process to full on HDR.  And as much as I like doing different things, all the time, I want to build a style that’s all my own and spend some time to focus on one area – whatever that area may be.

So, I am asking YOU, what area do you see my strength? What style processing?  I really want to pick an area and dedicate myself to it for the next few months – giving me direction.  Something I need right now.

Examples of my other “styles” I gravitate towards:

Cross Processing – Photoshop CS5

I have received a few emails asking how I cross-process my photos, so I figured I’d give you a quick step-by-step guide on how I do this in Photoshop CS5.  These techniques will actually work in whatever photo editor you use as the majority of the decent editors have curves.  For this tutorial, I took a photo of my daughter, Ashley, with my Nikon D700 and Carl Zeiss Planar T* 1.4/85 lens.  The photo was shot in RAW, as always, and imported into Photoshop, as seen below. All these screen shots are quite large, so you can click on them to see the full size versions.

Moving on, I add a curves layer.  Curves are used to adjust tonal ranges within an image – from the bright highlights to the deep shadows.  When you select curves, you’ll see that the channel selector is on RGB.  I like to begin with with the red channel, so click the drop-down menu and highlight the “red” so we can mess around with it.  I like to adjust the reds to cool off the shot a bit.  Look at the RAW above and you can see the warm tones in her flesh.  So, for my adjustments here, I create a gentle “sweep” in the shadows area, dipping the curve deeper into that channel.  This cools down my shadows and darkens the reds (notice inside her forearm).  Also, I knock back the highlights a tad (notice at the very top of the curve) and then adjust the mid-tones.  Think “S” shape when doing the reds.

I next move onto the blue channel and work with those tones.  As you can see below, I like the bring the peak highlights down a bit and bump up the shadows.  I do not use this as “curve” per se, rather I keep it as a straight line.  As you can see, it gives the image an overall blue hue.  If you notice the curtains, which are bright, the blues were greatly reduced compared to the RAW and Red Channel mix above.  And if you look at the shadows of her face, the blues are increased.  Again, this is up to your personal preference and adjust this channel how you like.

Next comes the green channel curve.  As you know from above, this is to enhance the tones in this channel alone.  I usually love a nice green tint to a cross process (I exaggerated here for an example, below) and in the highlights is where this one shines.  So, I am for a bigger “S” for this one, taking the highlights into a big sweeping curve.  My darks in this one were ok, so I straightened out the curve 3/4 of the way into it.  As you can see, this is now a heavily green tinted image.  That’s really it for curves.  Once I have them set up this standard way, I go back into each channel, making minor adjustments until the colors are just the flavor I want them to be.  For this image, I wanted it a bit more warm, so I went back in and warmed up the reds and blues and took down the greens a notch (you can see the outcome next.)

Now, to really make these curves sing, the trick is to change the layer mode.  This is a step that many people miss.  I change my curves layer to a color blending mode.  Notice what this does in the highlights and shadows by comparing the image above and below (again, you can click to enlarge).  You’ll notice the the adjustments we made with the curves are blended much more smooth – taking away the harsh tones – and creating and overall soft feel to the light.  This gives you a great idea on your final image, so you may find you need to tweak the curves at this point.

The final touches I make, once my curves are complete, is cleanup.  First I will zoom in to 150% and look for stray hairs, blemishes, etc. and clean them out with the Spot Healing Brush. I’ll next add a Brightness & Contrast layer.  I like to slide the contrast to the right, usually about 10-15 to to increase the tonal range.  Then slide the brightness to the right as well (about 10% on average) to give a little more light in the shadows.  The 1.4/85 is sometimes a little soft in the details, so, for this image I added a high pass at 0.8 to bring in some detail in her hair.  The only things I do next is a text layer (a signature stamp or a title to the image) and a crop.  The crop, in this instance, was 8×10.  Really, that’s it.  I next save the image and upload to Flickr.

So there you have it.  The final image that I uploaded last night.  Getting the look and feel of cross-processing is a personal preference.  There are no rules on how this should look (you’ll see people claiming that they should be more green, more blue, or what have you – but this is YOUR art).  I think it is something you should try out, even if it’s out of your comfort zone.  Again, shoot and have fun!